Puzzle Pieces
by 12cubed
Summary: Heroes/Lost Crossover. When Peter starts having strange dreams again, he and his friends find a new mission, this time involving the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815.
1. Curriculum Vitae

**Curriculum Vitae**

_**September 15th, 2007**_

_**New York University Medical Center**_

Locke had known what would happen once he came back from the Island. He's always known, deep down inside, that the paralysis would recur. That he'd lose his legs again.

Even while praying, even while begging, _Dear God, dear whoever it is or whatever it is that's out there, oh God, oh for the love of God please let me keep this one thing, I can lose everything else, I can lose the life I had out there, but please God let me be able to walk_.

Even while invoking a deity that he still called God but which in his mind's eye he saw as the Island, the lush and leafy Island of Miracles. He'd known.

But it was a necessary sacrifice. Necessary to save the Island--and for that, he would give anything. So he had returned and taken a new name, begun a new life, though it was old faces that he was seeking.

He'd ended up somewhere in New York, and had lain helpless by the side of the road, waiting for somebody to find him and call 911. He'd been taken to the hospital, but he was still waiting. Waiting and remembering.

* * *

_**November 1999**_

_**Somewhere in New York City**_

Locke didn't know what had made him take the trip.

All he knew was that he couldn't face going back to his dingy apartment for another weekend, couldn't face another evening watching _Wheel of Fortune_ while eating a soggy, tasteless microwave dinner, couldn't face another hour of sitting with an incompetent government-employed therapist who would force him to talk about childhood and adolescent and adult experiences that he'd rather forget.

In fact, he wanted to forget everything that had happened to him in his entire sorry, useless, pathetic waste of a life. And he'd always wanted to see the Empire State Building. So he'd blown off his therapy session and bought the cheapest ticket available to New York City.

Several hours later, he'd bought a hot dog from a street vendor (it wasn't very good, but at least it wasn't in a white plastic tray) and was riding on the subway to Queens. He'd spent some time in the fancy neighborhoods in Manhattan, but they had just made him feel uncomfortable and out of place. And he'd felt choked and crowded by the tourists and shoppers hurrying along Park Avenue.

Eventually he'd ducked into the nearest subway station and set off for the first destination he could think of. So Queens it was, then. It was a more fitting environment for him, anyway.

Locke settled into his seat, trying to ignore the strange, sour smell that permeated the entire subway. In a few minutes he had slipped into another world, playing a game that he'd begun as an escape, a diversion, but which was rapidly becoming an addiction.

_I think I lost him at the last station,_ he told himself, fingering a piece of paper that he'd left in his pocket. _The mission must be completed at 1800 hrs today. They're relying on me to carry it through without a hitch._

He glanced around at his fellow passengers. One man standing near the door in a trench coat and hat caught his eye--a scarf was covering most of his face.

_Impossible! I made sure that the changeover was undetectable. But still, I can't be too careful..._

Locke came to himself with a start as he realized that they'd arrived at his stop. His fantasy had been so vivid, so real, that it was reality that seemed artificial: the fluorescent lights of the subway station, the voice from the speaker system announcing the next stop, the mysterious stranger in the trench coat and hat, now transformed into a harmless commuter wrapped up against the cold.

Locke shivered as he walked out into the sunshine.

_Well, so what?_ he thought, as he strode along with his hands jammed in his pockets.

_So what if I make Walter Mitty look confident and fulfilled? It's not like there's anything in my life worth thinking about, worth holding onto, worth coming back for. Reality doesn't have anything to offer me._

And his fantasies were so real, so vivid--so much so that he could feel his pulse quickening as he planned the next move in a decisive battle, hear the arrows singing through the air on a hunt, smell the rich dark earth under his feet as he stepped onto unexplored territory in a foreign land.

He'd taken to reading anything and everything he could find to furnish his imaginary exploits with little touches that would make them come alive, details that would give them greater authenticity. Sun Tzu's _The Art of War_, _The Seven Kingdoms_, reports of archaeological digs in Egypt and Mesopotamia that described fabulous treasures unearthed in the tombs of the pharaohs.

The information Locke had amassed allowed him to travel to England as a knight of King Arthur's court, or to Japan as a samurai invading Korea and China, or to the Soviet Union as a US government agent. Why should he settle for the life he had been given by a cruel and unjust fate, when he could have so much more?

When Locke finally slowed his pace, he found himself in a street lined with small shops. There was a furniture store across the road, between a used bookstore and a watchmaker. The peeling sign above the door showed John that the latter belonged to "Gray and Sons."

He looked down at his own watch, remembering that it had been running slow for the past few months. For a while he had considered fixing it himself, but in the end, he'd decided against it. None of the numerous reference books and magazine articles that now filled his apartment had any connection to scientific subjects unless they had a military application--he'd wanted to obliterate the memory of the teenage nerd who'd been recruited by Mittelos Bioscience, not encourage it.

Locke crossed the street and stood in front of Gray and Sons, hesitating before pushing the door open and walking in.

It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. When they did, he saw the young man with dark hair and glasses, stooping over a desk at the back of the room.

"I'm sorry to disturb you."

"Oh no, not at all. Please come in. I'm just finishing this up."

Locke watched as the other man went about his work, using tweezers to put together the pieces in a cuckoo clock's delicate mechanism, putting on some sort of elaborate brass magnifying apparatus for the final adjustments. His fingers worked rapidly, as if knowing by instinct exactly how to place each cog, each screw, until he was done.

"What can I do for you, Mr...?"

"Locke. I'm, er..." Now that he was here, his problem seemed ridiculously trivial. "My watch. It's been running a little slow."

"Let me take a look at that." The other man took the watch from Locke and held it up to his ear. "Ah, yes. I see."

He removed the back of the case and began studying the inner parts.

Locke spoke again, more out of a desire to interrupt the silence than anything else. "So...are you 'Sons'?"

"Excuse me?" The watchmaker looked up, one of his eyes appearing oddly magnified under his loupe.

"Sons. You know, on the door, it says 'Gray and Sons.' I was just wondering if you were the, er, 'Sons.' Or 'Son,' rather, since you're obviously a person. In the singular."

The other man took a long time to reply, and Locke wondered if he had offended him. He was just about to apologize when the watchmaker said, "Yes. This was my father's business."

He paused, before continuing, "My name is Gabriel."

His tone was almost defiant, as if insisting on the existence of his own name. Locke, however, was too engrossed in his own thoughts to notice the subtle change in the other man's demeanor.

"It must have been nice," he said. "Sharing that with your father."

He tried not to think about Anthony Cooper, his voice, the look in his eyes as he'd smirked at Locke and told him how he had been used, then tossed aside. "Growing up in his workshop."

"Oh yes. It was...nice." This time, Locke noticed the trace of bitterness in Gabriel Gray's voice.

"It was so easy. So...convenient, being born into a profession. Knowing exactly what it was that I was destined for."

John Locke started as he recognized the emotion in Gabriel's eyes: the frustration, the unsettled desires, the longing for something greater.

He wanted to grab Gabriel by the shoulders and tell him that it wasn't too late, that he was still young, so much younger than he, Locke. Young enough to start over, to search for his dreams, his true destiny. He wanted to make Gabriel promise him never to let life cheat him of what it owed him.

He stood there staring for several seconds before he realized that the other man was trying to give him back his watch.

"Here you go, I've fixed it." Gray's expression had been wiped clean of all feeling; he was once again the calm, efficient watchmaker. "It shouldn't trouble you again. There's no charge: it was just a small bit of work."

Locke opened his mouth to thank him, but instead found himself saying something quite different.

"In Korea, there is an old ceremony that many parents still carry out with their young children. They take the child to a fortune teller, where there is a large table covered with an array of items. These can vary from place to place, but there is usually a book, a set of writing instruments, a pile of brightly colored cloths and silk tassels, money, and dried beans, among other things."

"The child is placed in front of these objects, and it is given complete freedom to choose any of them without encouragement, guidance, or hindrance from its parents. It can choose anything it wants. And from its choices, the fortune teller outlines the child's destiny."

Locke noted that Gabriel was listening with rapt attention, his formerly pale skin flushed.

"Of course, nowadays this ceremony is just that--a ceremony. Nobody truly believes that a child's future can be decided by what toys they reach for. But...I like the idea of such a ritual. Of giving the child freedom to choose, without any criticism of their choices. It often takes place on the child's first birthday, but really, there's no reason why it can't be held at any other time."

Once he'd finished speaking, Locke stood fiddling with his watch, feeling foolish. Who was he to tell a complete stranger all of this? He sounded insane.

But when he looked up, he saw that Gabriel did not seem angry or contemptuous. He was staring at the surface of his workbench. Locke waited for him to speak, then turned to go.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know why I said all that. I...I don't know. I didn't mean to imply that...if you're happy here, then that's great. It's just..."

"Just...don't let anyone tell you what you can't do."

* * *

_**May 2003**_

_**Tustin, California**_

"At your service, Colonel." Locke's boss smirked as he strode up to the desk and saluted smartly, clicking his heels together. He leaned forwards and whispered, "Mission accomplished, sir."

"Very funny, Randy." Locke resisted the impulse to staple the other man's hand to the desk and tried to concentrate on his work.

"Come on, John, where's your sense of humor?" Randy rapped out a quick beat on the top of the cubicle wall.

"I was only trying to join in your little _game_. It is just a game, isn't it? Honestly, sometimes I think you believe your own lies. Are you sure you're not going a little, you know?" He tapped his forehead with one finger.

"Just leave me alone, Randy. I'm trying to work," said Locke, through gritted teeth. If the jerk cracked one more joke he was going to grab him by his overly moussed head and put it through the computer monitor, boss or no boss.

"All right, all right, keep your hair on. So to speak. Just having a little fun."

Locke turned back to his work, trying to ignore the muscle he could feel twitching under his left eye. At that moment, the phone on his desk rang.

Locke stared at it as if he'd never seen it before. His phone _never_ rang. Sometimes he used it to call Sam and set up reconnaissance missions and raids. But really, nobody found it necessary to contact an office drone.

When the phone continued to ring, he answered it. "Hello?"

"Mr. Locke? Mr. John Locke?" The voice on the other end was unfamiliar.

"Speaking."

"Mr. Locke, my name is Bob Bishop. I am a representative of Primatech Paper Company. Perhaps you've heard of us?"

Locke's first impulse was to reply that there were hundreds of paper companies in America, and even he wasn't desperate enough to start researching all of them and committing their names to memory.

However, he just said, "No. Can't say that I have."

"That's quite all right. I'm calling because we are very interested in becoming a supplier for the company where you work. In addition to paper we also produce cardboard in a variety of weights, colors, and thicknesses that would be ideal for making boxes. Now--"

Locke interrupted the other man before he could continue. "Look, I think you've made a mistake. I'm just the collections supervisor. I don't handle supplies or clients or anything like that. You probably want to speak to my boss."

"Oh no, Mr. Locke. We wanted very specifically to speak to _you_. We chose you because you have some very special qualifications that make you an ideal fit for us."

Locke thought he now knew what he was dealing with. "That's funny. That's very funny. Whoever you are, I hope you got a kick out of this, because I sure did. Ha ha ha."

"This isn't a prank call, Mr. Locke. If you change your mind, call us. We're in the Yellow Pages." And with that, Bob Bishop rang off.

Locke was sitting in front of the TV watching _Wheel of Fortune_ when he changed his mind.

To be honest, he'd thought about calling more than once. He'd looked up the number, even begun dialing, only to stop at the last minute. What was the point? He turned up the volume, trying to drown out his own thoughts.

"Date with Destiny?"

"That's right!"

Locke stared at the TV. The word was spelled out on the screen in giant block capitals. D-E-S-T-I-N-Y.

Before he knew it, he'd picked up the phone and dialed the number. It rang only once before someone picked up.

He almost chickened out again the next day, while waiting for Bob Bishop to come to his apartment, while shaking his hand and going through the necessary introductions, while waiting for the other man to say something. He didn't know what he'd expected Bob to look like, but he found himself being simultaneously reassured by the other man's kindly air and soothing voice, and unsettled by his cold eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses.

After a few minutes spent fussing over tea and small talk, Bob got down to business. And listening to him, Locke started to doubt the other man's sanity. He let Bob speak for a while before breaking in.

"I don't know who you think you are, but I can't believe you wasted my time with this nonsense. Get out of my house."

"John." Bob didn't sound surprised or offended, only gently sorrowful. "I thought you would have more faith than this. I thought that you would be more receptive to the miraculous."

"There's no such thing as miracles." Locke felt himself getting more and more angry.

_Look at me,_ he wanted to say. _Look at my life. I'm in a wheelchair. Why the hell would I have faith in anything?_

And then it happened.

For a second Locke thought he'd gone insane. But no, he'd seen it with his own eyes. A woman had just walked into the room _through_ the wall of the apartment. Locke stared, then blinked, then stared again. Then he turned back to Bob.

"John, meet Louise. Louise, this is John Locke."

For the next few minutes he listened spellbound as Bob told him about the Company, about the work they did, about the work that they wanted him, John Locke, to be a part of. He couldn't believe it. There were people out there in the world, special people, extraordinary people, gifted with abilities that until now he'd thought only existed in fantasies and comic books.

And for one mad, joyous minute, Locke believed that he was one of them. He had to be. There was no other reason why Bob would have recruited him, no other reason why the Company had sought him out.

That is, until Bob mentioned the Company policy of pairing 'specials' with 'non-specials,' and suggested that Locke be paired with Louise.

"So I'm not one of them. I'm a 'non-special.'"

"I wouldn't place too much emphasis on the terminology, John. The important thing is that you are perfect for this job. You might not be suited for field work, but when it comes to recruiting new members, and screening people we bring in--"

"Oh, to hell with that. I should have known. I should have known this was coming. You can take your offer and leave. I'm not interested."

Locke knew that he was working himself up into a rage, but he didn't care.

"What, you thought I'd leap at the chance to be around people all day who _are_ special, who do have gifts? Who've won the genetic lottery? You thought I'd enjoy working in another office, watching life pass me by? Forget it. Just go."

Bob sighed and got up to leave. "I'm disappointed in you, John."

"Story of my life."

When Locke woke up that afternoon, with a splitting headache and no memory of the past 24 hours, he assumed that he had taken too many antidepressants the day before.

A part of him wished that he'd taken enough to kill himself.

Another part whispered that he'd never have the courage to do it.

* * *

_**September 16th, 2007**_

_**New York University Medical Center**_

Locke had been moved out of the ER and into recovery, where he would go through rehab before being released. The entire routine was depressingly familiar, but he also felt exultant. At least he had chosen this. He had chosen this fate, gone into it with his eyes open. And he had a goal, a sense of purpose.

It would be a week or two before he could visit Jack and the others, but he could wait. He leaned back and closed his eyes, picturing the Island and recalling all the secrets that it had yielded to him. He could save it. He would save it.

Locke turned his head as he heard the door click open. He saw a young man enter the room, smiling as he brushed the dark hair out of his eyes.

"Good morning, Mr. Bentham," he said. "It's nice to meet you. My name's Peter Petrelli. I'm your new nurse."


	2. Chapter and Verse

**Chapter and Verse**

_**October 21st, 2007**_

_**Peter Petrelli's Apartment, Manhattan**_

Peter didn't dream anymore.

Not since that day in Odessa when Nathan had been shot while standing right next to him, had collapsed in his arms and actually _died_, later in the hospital, before Claire's blood revived him.

He still had ordinary, non-prophetic dreams, of course. For a while he'd mistaken them for the real thing, waking in a panic after yet another nightmare where Nathan died a horrible death, perhaps drowning in the ocean, choking as the salty water filled his lungs, or burning in a fire, the flesh searing off his skin, or murdered, a bullet blasting through his skull and blowing his brain apart so that it was beyond repair.

A year ago, Peter would have known that such things could never happen, not to Nathan. But for a few hours that February, Nathan Petrelli had been dead. There was now a time in his life when his older brother hadn't existed. And that meant that he couldn't be sure about anything, not anymore.

Peter would pick up the phone next to his bed, not caring that it was three o'clock in the morning, not caring what Heidi would think of yet another frantic phone call where he asked if Nathan was all right.

"I'm fine, Pete. Jesus. I'm fine. I'm not drowning, I'm not in a fire, I haven't been crushed by any falling objects. I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

Nathan's voice sounded gruff and impatient, but Peter knew that he wasn't really annoyed by these calls.

When two months passed without any of his dreams coming true, Peter began to wonder if he'd lost the power for good.

After three months, he began to pray that he had.

After four months, he thought it was safe to hope that he had.

After five months, he didn't need the sleeping pills anymore.

A year ago, he'd told Simone that he could see amazing things every time he closed his eyes.

Now, apart from the occasional nightmare, Peter's dreams were entirely prosaic. Just your run-of-the-mill products of the subconscious.

Nothing extraordinary about them at all.

And he was grateful for that.

* * *

_**October 4th, 2007**_

_**Petrelli Mansion, Upper East Side, Manhattan**_

Claire asked Peter about his dreams once, when they were sitting on the roof of Nathan's house.

There was a cocktail party in full swing downstairs, with most of the upper crust of New York society sipping champagne and exchanging gossip, and Claire had stood there and smiled and shaken hands and minded her manners until she thought she was going to scream.

So she and Peter had slipped out to the roof. Claire had wanted to go to the Empire State Building, but if Nathan had found out she would have been shipped straight back to the Bennets. So they'd compromised.

Claire looked up at Peter, noticing that his hair had finally grown enough that he had to keep brushing it out of his eyes. She was glad. He hadn't seemed like himself, somehow, with shorter hair. Another reason to hate Elle.

Or maybe it had just been the effect of everything that had happened after Kirby Plaza. Nathan being burned in the explosion. Peter's stay at the Company. Then the amnesia, then the brief trip to Ireland which she still didn't know everything about, then the Virus almost getting out, then Nathan getting shot.

Peter had been frozen for a long time after that, distant and passive and dead in a way that had scared her. He'd stopped asking questions. The eagerness had gone out of his voice.

And he wasn't using his powers anymore.

Her blood had saved Nathan, but Claire had known that a simple injection couldn't fix what was wrong with Peter.

But he'd had Nathan by his side again, for the first time in a long time. And, Claire thought with a rush of fierce pride, he'd had her, too. And he'd thawed out, little by little, once he'd realized that they weren't going anywhere, that he wasn't going to lose them.

She still remembered the relief she'd felt when he asked her if she wanted to come and stay in New York.

_"What about Nathan?"_

_"He wants you to come too, Claire. You're his daughter."_

_"I told him I already have a family. Do you think he remembers that?"_

_"It doesn't matter what you told him. That's not how families work. You should know that."_

Claire knew that Peter had become a lot more like his old self over the past several months. But something was still missing. And she couldn't stop worrying about it.

It had taken her a while to realize what he was doing. She'd wondered why she never saw him use telekinesis--it seemed so convenient--but she'd figured that he just didn't want to be reminded of Sylar.

It wasn't until she had asked him to take her flying that he'd explained what was going on. She could have kicked herself for being so clueless. She'd even tried to talk him out of it, at first.

_"Don't you want to use your powers? Peter, we can do all these amazing things. Don't you want to know more?"_

_"Sure I do, Claire. But it's not worth it if I'm going to end up hurting people."_

_"But I thought we were going to--"_

_"Claire, no. I've got you and Nathan and our friends safe and sound. That's all I need. We don't have to go looking for trouble."_

She hadn't asked him again, after that.

She'd spent so long wishing for this, longing for a friend who'd understand what she was going through and enjoy it with her, but she couldn't bring herself to push Peter into doing something he wasn't ready for.

It was enough that he was here, with her. It was enough that they could talk.

But there was one subject they didn't talk about, not after the first time.

_"So this guy. Adam. How old did you say he was?"_

_"Around four hundred years."_

_"Am I going to live that long?"_

_"Mohinder says...maybe."_

_"Oh. Are you?"_

_"I don't know."_

Claire's next questions had remained unspoken. _Would you live that long, if you stayed with me?_ And, more importantly, _Do you want to?_

She'd wanted to ask, but she'd been afraid of his answers. It was the first time she'd felt like that around Peter.

So after that, they'd stuck to safer topics of conversation, other powers. Like dreaming.

"How do the special dreams feel different? How do you know?"

"I'm not sure how to describe it." Peter stared down at the ground, thinking. "The air feels different. The light feels different. Like light from another place, not Earth."

"Different how? Is it warmer? Colder? Or is it the color that's different?"

Claire swung her legs over the edge of the roof. She liked being up this high, being on the edge of jumping without actually going over. It was the next best thing to flying.

"No. It's more like...like it's thinner. Clearer. Just different."

She sighed in frustration. "I still don't get it."

Peter looked at her for a while, then out at the city spread out below them.

"You know how sometimes you wake up and you know there was a thunderstorm while you were asleep? Even though you slept through the whole thing, didn't hear any of it?"

Claire nodded.

"You just know, right? From something in the air. It's like that."

Claire's face broke into a grin. "Thanks."

"What, for explaining what my visions feel like?"

"You know. Just...thanks."

She studied Peter's face, outlined against the night sky. She could hear the hum of the party downstairs, and wondered what Nathan and Angela were doing at that moment. Angela was probably pretending to make small talk while hatching a new plan for world domination. Nathan was most likely turning on the charm for business associates while wishing he was up here with them.

Claire smiled to herself, remembering the day when she'd come to New York looking for Peter Petrelli, and had found her biological family instead. At the time, she'd thought it was a disaster--discovering that you'd been crushing on your temporarily dead uncle was bad enough, but finding out that your father and grandmother were in league with mobsters and plotting to blow up New York City just pushed the whole thing into "My Life Totally Sucks" territory.

The Petrellis had been the most screwed-up, dysfunctional family unit she'd seen outside of daytime soaps. But to her surprise, she'd found herself fitting in with them pretty easily--sometimes too easily for comfort. Peter insisted that it was in her blood: that she just got them without thinking about it. She'd initially rejected the idea out of hand, but it didn't seem so bad anymore.

Maybe, some day, Peter would take her flying. It could be a week from now. It could be a year. But she could wait.

Peter was relieved that he'd managed to answer Claire properly. He didn't mind talking about his abilities with her--in fact, he enjoyed it.

When he was with her, he could almost forget all the bad things that had come with their powers--the bomb, the Virus, the alternate futures--and focus on the good: the shock of joy he'd felt when he talked to Claire in Texas and realized she could heal, the excitement of meeting Hiro on the subway, the love in Nathan's voice when they'd talked before the press conference in Odessa.

He stared out at the New York skyline again, waiting for Claire's next question.

"How did things go with your new patient? What was his name, Mr. Bentham?"

"Jeremy. He was released a few days ago. I think he'll be fine. I don't think that was his real name, though."

"Why not? Maybe his parents were philosophy majors."

Claire often complained about the curriculum at the expensive prep school where Angela and Nathan had enrolled her, but Peter suspected that she enjoyed the challenge more than she let on. He doubted that she'd learned about Jeremy Bentham at Union Wells or Costa Verde.

"It was just something about him. For one thing, he only had one visitor the whole time he was at the hospital, and they didn't seem very happy to see each other."

Peter paused, remembering the afternoons he'd spent with Jeremy. He'd gone back to work a few months ago; the agency hadn't asked any questions about his extended absence.

He was grateful for his job. It gave him something to focus on, and it made him so tired at the end of the day that he could fall asleep as soon as he closed his eyes, without reliving the worst moments of the past year over and over again.

And it let him make a difference to someone's life, without putting the rest of the world in danger. He knew he was a good nurse, and he didn't want anything bigger, not anymore. This was enough. One person at a time. One patient at a time.

"He was a pretty interesting guy. A lot of war stories, and the scars to go with them. Very good at chess and backgammon. Oh, and he'd had a kidney removed."

"He sounds like someone with a lot of secrets. It's a good thing you don't use your mind-reading ability anymore," said Claire, smiling. "Because I'm pretty sure that's unethical practice."

"I guess. But I don't think I'd do that, you know, even if I were still using my powers."

Claire raised her eyebrows.

"Really, I wouldn't."

Peter often found it difficult to convince other people that he didn't make much use of his telepathic ability. The truth was that he didn't find it all that useful. There were often layers upon layers of thoughts that could flat-out contradict each other. And most of the time he could guess what people were thinking without reading their minds.

So many people didn't know what they wanted. Going with his instincts was the best way, more often than not.

"So," said Claire. "An ex-military type under an assumed name. I'm guessing you didn't read him the stock pages."

"Definitely not," said Peter. He checked his watch and realized that the party would be winding down--Nathan was probably getting worried.

He stood up on the stone ledge of the roof and walked right up to the edge, rocking back and forth on his heels, feeling the wind against his face.

For a brief moment, he remembered the day when he'd stood on another rooftop, waiting for Nathan. He'd believed then, with all his heart and soul, that these powers were a gift--a blessing. That they had a destiny. That they'd share it together.

That was then. This was now.

"We'd better be getting back, Claire," he said. "Come on."

* * *

_**October 21st, 2007**_

_**Peter Petrelli's Apartment, Manhattan**_

Peter didn't dream anymore.

Or at least, he thought he didn't. Even so, when the first visitor came, he knew he wasn't awake. And he wasn't just dreaming.

Peter blinked as his eyes adjusted to the blazing sunshine. He could tell that wherever he was, the air was clear and pure and fresh, nothing like the smoggy, fume-clogged air of Manhattan.

When he looked around, shielding his eyes, he saw that he was standing in a field covered with lush green grass that came up to his knees, and dotted with blood-red flowers as far as the eye could see. A mountain towered over him to the left, reaching into a bright blue sky.

There was something in the middle of the field. As Peter walked towards it, he stared, wondering if it was what he thought it was.

A confessional.

Somehow, Peter knew what he had to do. He walked into one of the booths and closed the door. A voice spoke from behind the grille.

"Yemi."

Peter opened his mouth to say that he wasn't Yemi, but the person in the other booth spoke first.

"Yemi. I have not changed my mind. I am not here to confess. I have stolen. I stole food because you were hungry. I have killed. I killed to save you from killing. If these are sins, then I do not ask forgiveness for them. You are my brother. I do not regret doing what I did to save you. I do not regret sacrificing my soul to save yours."

Peter hesitated. He shouldn't be here. He wasn't a priest. He wasn't even a Catholic.

He'd stopped going to church after one last, furious argument with his father, where he'd yelled that just because the commandment said, "Thou shalt not kill" instead of "Thou shalt not kill, not even by proxy" didn't mean that Moses had intended it to be a legal loophole.

His father had yelled back that there was nothing ambiguous about honoring your father and mother, and if he was going to be a self-righteous smartass then he could do it while staying at home on Sundays.

He had no right to give absolution. He had no right to even be hearing this. But he knew what the other man needed. Knew what he deserved. Knew that his life merited compassion and love, not punishment.

"I'm not Yemi. But I think wherever he is, whatever you've done, he would understand. He's your brother. He loves you. And you did those things because you love him."

Peter paused. "You're a good brother."

There was no reply. Peter stepped out of the booth--and found himself stepping into nothingness as the ground disappeared beneath him.

He was falling, falling, falling as the wind rushed past his ears and stung his face, and he flailed his limbs desperately, trying to fly, trying to hold onto the thought of Nathan to call up his power, but it didn't work.

With a thud that reverberated through his whole body, Peter fell to the ground. He lay still for a while, wondering if he'd broken any bones. He could feel sand beneath his hands and face, and got up cautiously. He didn't seem to be hurt at all.

_Good thing this is a vision,_ he thought to himself--and then he stopped as he saw what was in front of him.

He was standing on a beach, with a forest stretching away in front of him, and palm trees dotting the coast at intervals. He could hear the lapping of the waves behind him. In front of the trees there was something that looked like the framework of a large building, made out of logs and held together with twine. The confessional stood inside it.

Peter walked up to the place where he thought the entrance would be when the building was completed. A stick stood upright in the sand, marking the spot. He pulled it out of the ground and saw that there were engravings all over the surface. Only one, however, was legible.

"Matthew 16:18."

Peter woke up.

He walked over to his closet, and got out a battered and dusty bible that he'd thrown in a box years ago. Somehow, he hadn't been able to throw it away. He flipped through it quickly, searching for the relevant verse.

**Matthew 16:18**_--And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it._

* * *

_**October 22nd, 2007**_

_**Nathan Petrelli's Office, Manhattan**_

The next day, Peter went to see Nathan.

"I thought you didn't have those dreams anymore."

"That's what I thought, too, until last night," said Peter. "But this one wasn't just an ordinary dream, Nathan."

Nathan looked at his brother, trying to guess what he was thinking. Peter was staring at the floor, clenching and unclenching his hands.

"I think it's happening again. I think something's on its way."

"So what are you going to do?" Almost instinctively, Nathan prepared himself for an overenthusiastic response; he started thinking of possible objections to try and slow his brother down if he came up with any harebrained schemes.

"I don't know."

"Peter, you don't even know if this is a real vision yet, and even if it is, it might not be worth our while to follow it up. It could be dangerous."

"Maybe you're right."

"I mean, there's no telling what could--" Nathan stopped as he took in what Peter was saying. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I think you're right," said Peter. "We don't know what's going on, and even if we did do something it would probably end up putting one or more of us in danger."

He stood up, putting his hands in his pockets. "Maybe...maybe I should just ignore it."

He glanced at Nathan quickly before looking away again. "Do you think I should?"

Nathan didn't know what to say. He'd spent most of his time since this entire crazy mess had begun trying to persuade Peter to drop this nonsense and get his head out of the clouds. And now his brother was doing just that.

He knew that he should feel relieved. The problem was, he didn't.

In fact, he felt more worried than ever.

"Look, if this really is a vision, then maybe you can't ignore it." Part of Nathan's brain was protesting at the fact that he was actually encouraging Peter in his insanity, but he couldn't stand to see Peter like this. It felt wrong, somehow.

"So you're saying I should, I don't know, do something?"

"Maybe. Just--" Nathan put an arm around Peter's shoulder. "Just don't shut the door on it, Peter."

* * *

_**October 26th, 2007**_

_**Peter Petrelli's Apartment, Manhattan**_

Peter spent the next few days trying to decide what to do. He hadn't had any more dreams, and he didn't know if he was more relieved or disappointed by that fact.

He'd considered calling Claire and telling her what had happened, but in the end had decided not to. He knew how badly she wanted him to start using his powers again, and it wouldn't be fair to let her down if nothing came of it.

He'd been so sure, though, when he woke up. He'd known it was a message. And he hadn't felt that kind of certainty in a long time.

He just needed...something. Something to get him started. Something that would let him decide whether to keep searching, or forget this ever happened and move on.

Peter let out a sigh of frustration. Sitting in his room all day wasn't going to help. He decided to clean his closet: he'd been putting it off for weeks, and maybe he could come up with an idea in the meantime.

A couple of hours later, he was lifting a shoebox out of the top shelf when something hard and heavy landed on his head.

"Ow! What the--" Peter picked up the offending object, and was about to toss it in a bag for Goodwill when he recognized what it was.

An old Christmas present from his mother: a beginner's painting set, with brushes, a palette, and tubes of watercolors. Unopened and unused.


	3. Peer Review

**Peer Review**

_**October 27th, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft, Lower Manhattan**_

"You've been using your powers again?" Mohinder sounded pleased. "Peter, that's fantastic. I'm glad for you."

Peter hadn't gone back to Nathan after their first talk. He'd been scared to. Ever since that day in Odessa, he'd decided to keep his feet on the ground. But a part of him hadn't wanted to give it up, had wanted to fly again.

And now this dream had come along, and he'd felt that sense of buoyancy, of uplift, of things beginning, that he'd thought was gone forever.

But that was how it had been the first time around, and he'd ended up almost getting Nathan killed. Twice.

Nathan had been kind when they talked about his dream--too kind. He couldn't look at the worry and sympathy in his brother's eyes and stop himself from seeing him dead, bleeding, burned, broken.

He couldn't talk to Nathan about this, not just yet. He'd needed to talk to _someone_, though, and he'd thought of Mohinder.

Peter remembered picking up _Activating Evolution_ at the library, going through it in amazement and wonder that there was someone out there who was seeing the same things as he was. He remembered knocking on Mohinder's door a year ago, hopeful and a little nervous.

He'd expected to find a middle-aged scholar. Instead, he found someone like him--a young man looking for answers. Someone who'd become a friend.

He thought Mohinder would understand.

"I don't know," said Peter. "I mean, I came to you because I know you've studied some of us, and I was wondering if you could help me."

"I'd be delighted," said Mohinder. "You know, it's really a great pity that these results aren't publishable. Claire alone would fill an entire year's worth of issues of _Nature_. And as for you, Peter--"

"You'd have to start a new journal," said Peter, with a wry grin. "_Un-Natural_. Or _Freak of Nature_."

"Indeed." Mohinder laughed. "So, what have you brought for me?"

"I had this dream about a week ago, and I think it was one of the special ones, you know? I'd stopped having them for a while, but I'm almost sure they're back, now. And then--I painted these."

Peter took out some drawings from the folder he had brought with him, and laid them out on the table.

He started explaining everything that had happened in more detail, when he realized that Mohinder wasn't listening: instead, he was staring at the paintings.

"Peter...this woman. Did you know who she was when you drew her? Have you seen her before?" Mohinder was pointing at several of the sketches, and Peter was astonished to see his hand shaking.

"No. That is, I don't recognize her." Peter already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask, but he asked it anyway.

"Do you know who she is?"

* * *

_**March 2000**_

_**Stanford University, Palo Alto, California**_

Mohinder breathed a sigh of relief. He'd managed to get through most of his first major international conference without any missteps. At least, his father had appeared pleased during their dinner last night.

_"You've made many important contacts, Mohinder. Remember, social networking is as important a part of these events as absorbing scientific information. Particularly at a meeting like this, full of leaders in the field."_

_"Yes, father."_

Mohinder hadn't managed to land a spot as a speaker, which wasn't surprising given that he was a second year doctoral student. He had brought a poster presentation, however, and had stood dutifully in front of it for three hours every afternoon, explaining his work to anyone who happened to pass by.

For the most part the professors had ignored him, too busy to spare the time to someone at the bottom of the academic food chain. A few who were friends and acquaintances of his father had nodded to him as they passed, but the people who stopped to talk were students like himself, trying to size up the competition and perhaps gain some useful hints for their own work.

_"I spoke to Klein and Gordon. They were very impressed by your poster--Klein in particular said it was astonishing for someone only in their second year."_

Mohinder had nodded and smiled, but he knew exactly what Dr. Klein's praise was worth. He'd given Mohinder's work a perfunctory glance before making his excuses and leaving, but he was aiming for a prestigious research grant and knew that Chandra was on the awarding committee. And Gordon hadn't had an original thought since the eighties.

It wasn't that Mohinder wasn't proud of his work: he was. He just wished that he didn't always have to wonder how much of what little recognition he got was due to his name, and how much to his own efforts.

_"I suppose you're going to all the talks tomorrow?"_

_"Yes, I had intended to."_

Mohinder had gone through the conference program and circled every presentation that was even remotely relevant to his own research, and some that weren't. Chandra had suggested that he pace himself, saying that there was no use in wearing himself out, but at the same time Mohinder had known that his father would be disappointed if he didn't appear overenthusiastic.

And the thing was, he _did_ want to hear all these talks. He couldn't remember a time when Chandra's motivations and his own hadn't been so intertwined that he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

_"Edmund Burke is an outstanding speaker. He's been doing some very interesting work on the effect of hormone therapy in treatments for infertility. Not our field, of course, but fascinating nonetheless. An interesting character, too. Not the most pleasant person in the world, but then no one aiming for greatness can afford to be too troubled about his popularity. Well, I'll see you in the morning, Mohinder. Make sure you get plenty of sleep."_

His father had been right: Burke was an excellent speaker. Concise, insightful, charismatic. And yet cold.

Mohinder stood in the lounge with a cup of grainy instant coffee in one hand, wondering if he should go up and introduce himself. There appeared to be little opportunity for networking, however; Burke was surrounded by a group of eager post-docs and students, as well as a few of his colleagues, expounding on his theories as he munched on hors d'oeuvres.

"Excuse me." The quiet, soft voice over his shoulder made Mohinder start in surprise. He turned to see a tall blonde woman with large blue eyes.

She smiled and held out her hand.

"I'm sorry to be so abrupt, but I wanted to introduce myself. I'm Juliet."

"Oh, no trouble at all." Mohinder shook her hand, warmed by her smile. "I'm Mohinder. Mohinder Suresh."

He waited for the inevitable, "Suresh. Are you related to Chandra Suresh?" But it didn't come.

Instead, she said, "I saw your poster yesterday during the break. I wanted to ask you about it, but when I wasn't busy, you were busy, and vice versa, so I thought I would come up and talk to you now."

Mohinder felt a rush of almost disbelieving pride. "Oh, well, thank you. That's most kind of you. I'm just a second year student, I...it's nothing, really."

"Don't be modest. I'm not flattering you." Juliet smiled again. "I want to know about your work."

Mohinder began talking, holding back a little at first, but soon finding that the words flowed out of him of their own accord.

He described his father's initial insight: that the Human Genome Project, once completed, would not only expand the size of the territory available to geneticists, but would allow them to analyze the true significance of the roles genes played in relation to one another, thereby opening up an almost infinite number of novel investigative routes.

"The real significance of the Project is that it will give us a searchable database of the entire genome," said Mohinder. "One could develop algorithms for mapping certain classes of genes based on common sequences. Or discover genes that work in pairs, the first encoding an inhibitor or initiator for the activation of the second. Or expand this idea to draw up whole chains of proteins specified by genes all over the genome, each dependent for its production on the activation of one or more of the rest."

He went on, warming to the subject. "Or one could look for DNA sequences that don't conform to the central dogma of gene produces mRNA produces protein: sequences that play entirely different, unknown or unsuspected roles in human biochemistry. I've begun writing computer programs that allow a targeted scan of the human genome for DNA sequences that match specific criteria. Then, if they give useful results, experimenters could go in and splice out the sections of interest, and study them in isolation. And who knows what they could find? Apart from simple intellectual curiosity, the possible implications for gene therapy alone are astounding."

After a few minutes Mohinder realized that he had been monopolizing the conversation and stopped talking.

"I am so sorry. I didn't mean to bore you with a monologue on my intended dissertation."

"Oh no. You haven't bored me at all," said Juliet. Mohinder glanced at her, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that she appeared to be sincere.

"But I haven't asked you anything about your own work. And I would like very much to know," said Mohinder.

And he did want to know. He was curious about what kind of work this woman could be doing--what kind of person she was that she'd be interested in his research.

"I'm working on something very similar to Ed: hormone studies in human infertility. But geared much more towards finding practical treatments, which is why I'm also working on drugs that aren't based on hormones."

"Ed. Edmund Burke?" Mohinder felt surprised. He wouldn't have thought Juliet was the kind of woman who would be on a first name basis with Dr. Burke.

"Yes." She hesitated for a moment before continuing, "He's my ex-husband."

If Mohinder had been surprised before, he was now positively incredulous. Burke might be an eminent scientist, but he was also short, bald, and decidedly unattractive. An uncharitable suspicion crept into his mind that Juliet might have married Burke as a form of career advancement: it wasn't an uncommon occurrence.

Juliet caught his eye and he looked away, embarrassed. Her expression had become closed off and wary, and Mohinder wondered if she'd guessed what he was thinking.

At that moment, Edmund Burke appeared next to Juliet, a glass of wine in one hand and a pastry in the other. "Ah, Jules. I see you've been making the rounds."

He nodded to Mohinder. "I talked to your father. He has some interesting theories. Of course, could be all rainbows and moonshine, but he might have something, you never know."

"I was just talking to Mohinder about his work."

"Thinking of collaborating? Wonderful idea," said Burke, smirking. "But if you ask me, Mohinder, is it? Better to go straight to the source when you can, if you know what I mean. Though it's probably for the best, seeing as I'll be too busy to co-author any projects with grad students outside my lab. Good luck to the both of you."

And with that, he was gone.

Mohinder and Juliet stood in awkward silence for a few moments. Mohinder was fuming. He knew all too well what Juliet was feeling: he'd felt it many times in his father's presence, though Chandra had never been as dismissive and rude as Burke.

Suddenly he was sure that Juliet hadn't married Burke for personal gain. He'd been accused of selling his father's name his entire life--shouldn't he give her the benefit of the doubt, too? His thoughts were interrupted when Juliet spoke.

"Ed suggested it just now, but it's actually why I approached you," she said, the warmth and confidence returning to her voice.

"How would you feel about working together on a research project?"

* * *

_**August 2000**_

_**Juliet Burke's Apartment, Florida**_

Juliet had never had any doubts about her abilities. It wasn't the science that she found difficult: it was the people.

She liked being able to lose herself in MATLAB code or a microscope slide; the intricacies of a chemical reaction involved in manufacturing an organic molecule; the heartbeat of a foetus transmitted via ultrasound.

It was when she had to talk, laugh, make polite conversation, take her head out of her research and interact with other human beings that she was often at a loss, afraid of making a mistake, afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.

After ten weeks of working with Mohinder, Juliet knew that he was no longer in any doubt about her abilities, either. She knew that he'd had the same thought about her and Ed as every other person she'd ever met--she'd seen it in his eyes. She couldn't blame him: it happened so often that you'd have to be an idiot not to at least suspect.

But she'd also seen that he wasn't someone who would continue harboring the same suspicion once he'd seen her at work.

They were working on a project that combined their fields of research: Mohinder writing computer programs that searched for genes related to fertility in the mouse genome, and Juliet using his results to knock out the relevant genes in laboratory mice and study the results.

By this time, Juliet knew that she'd been right in her original assessment of Mohinder's talent and perseverance. His poster had stood out among the rest, and she'd been impressed by the amount of dedication and hard work that had gone into it.

She'd known that he was Chandra Suresh's son, of course, but she thought that she could recognize unreasonable favoritism when she saw it. Still, she'd introduced herself to Mohinder and struck up a conversation with him, just to be sure. She'd been impressed: more impressed than she'd expected.

Even so, Juliet wished that she could give Mohinder some advice. He was careful, dedicated, almost painfully thorough, but in her opinion he was also too cautious. Unwilling to take a leap of faith in his own hypotheses, though he was ready enough to accept anything that his father had first endorsed.

Juliet hadn't spent many years as Ed's wife, but she knew the effect that a powerful, dominating personality could have on one's own growth as a scientist: she couldn't imagine what it must have been like growing up as Chandra Suresh's son.

She remembered reading in a biography of Paul Dirac that the great physicist had only felt truly free after his father's death: she didn't want that to happen to Mohinder. Come to think of it, she didn't want that to happen to her, either--though she doubted that her ex-husband would affect her to that extent.

Juliet wished that she knew how to tell Mohinder to trust his instincts, to lose his fear of making mistakes, but she knew that she wouldn't be able to find the right words. At best she'd weaken their partnership; at worst she could start a fight.

So she avoided the subject, focusing on the small picture instead: asking him to adjust his sweeps of the DNA to search for new inhibitors and receptors, or changing their line of attack to investigate male as well as female hormones.

Juliet knew that she wasn't filling the role that a true mentor should, by helping Mohinder in his overall professional development as well as this one project. But she also knew that she wasn't ready to be a mentor; she could barely hold her own life together as it was.

When they had gotten enough results to publish their first paper, they celebrated with a dinner at her apartment. He cooked, with ingredients he'd found at the local market: a fragrant curry that put Juliet's own minimal culinary skills to shame. She brought the wine.

They were both pleasantly full and on their second glasses of Chianti when Juliet proposed a toast.

"An excellent idea," said Mohinder. "But what shall we toast to?"

"How about Ed?" Juliet found herself giggling. "After all, he did suggest it first. The collaboration, I mean."

"I'm not sure if I like that idea," Mohinder smiled, then frowned. "I hope you don't mind if I say that, in my opinion, our first toast would be wasted on him."

"Okay." Juliet smiled back. Then, perhaps aided by the wine she'd drunk, she went on, "But I wouldn't be where I am now without him, you know."

Mohinder shook his head vehemently. "That's not true. I will admit that the thought did enter my mind, for a moment. But I've seen your work. You have a remarkable brain. You would have succeeded with or without your ex-husband."

"Oh, I'm not fishing for compliments," said Juliet.

"I'm merely telling the truth. I know I have talent. And I work hard. But diligence and ability aren't always enough to succeed. It would be if the world were fair. But it isn't fair, is it? I've made it to the top faster because I had Ed's backing. My first paper got accepted to a first class journal because it had his name on it. And that got me a slot at the next big conference, which got me a grant for my next project..."

She hesitated, swirling the wine around in her glass.

"I can see it in the way people look at me. Other post-docs, other graduate students. And the thing is, in a way it's unfair, because I have worked hard, and I do have brains. But in a way it's not, because being Mrs. Edmund Burke had its advantages. It's not that simple."

Finally, she looked straight at Mohinder. "You should know that."

She wondered if she'd said too much. But he nodded. "I was surprised, when we first met, that you didn't ask me if I was related to my father. You knew, didn't you?"

"Yes. I knew. I assumed you'd be sick of people asking you."

"I was. I am," said Mohinder. "My father is...very prominent in his field. Our field. And that has undoubtedly helped me, in the same way that your ex-husband's position helped you. But it has been a mixed blessing."

Mohinder went on, looking down at the table. "At least you chose your work, your research. Sometimes I don't even know whether I chose genetics, or whether my father chose it for me."

That was one question that Juliet could answer.

"I can't tell you how to deal with your father, Mohinder, or how to be a better scientist. But I can tell you that you love your work. I've seen it. And I love mine. That's something that office politics and social networking can't ever change."

He looked up at her, drawing comfort from her words.

"I've been straight with you so far," said Juliet. "So you can trust me on this."

Mohinder thought about this for a minute, then smiled. "I have a toast."

"All right then, let's hear it."

"To independence."

Juliet felt her own face breaking into a grin as she raised her glass. "To independence."

* * *

_**December 2004**_

_**Juliet Burke's House, The Others' Camp, The Island**_

_"Let's go over it again."_

_"I know what to do."_

_"Let's go over it again, just to be sure."_

Juliet moved through her house, putting things in order, replacing books on shelves, sorting her laundry. She knew that it was a pointless exercise: if everything went according to plan then she'd be living at the beach with the rest of the castaways, and everything would be waiting for her when she got back.

But she was restless and couldn't sleep, and she'd always resorted to cleaning and organizing her filing cabinets when she was attacked by insomnia.

She went through her drawers, going over Ben's plan in her head while filing away papers and journals. She knew what she would say when she woke up, handcuffed next to Kate, or when Kate discovered her lie, as she inevitably would, but she didn't have any pre-rehearsed lines. She figured that her statements would sound more natural if they were improvised.

Juliet stopped when she came across an old paper in one of her cabinets.

"A Computationally Directed Study of Genes Influencing Fertility in Field Mice," by Juliet Burke and Mohinder Suresh.

There was a Post-It attached to the front that read, "Our first blow for independence. I hope you remember our old toast and are happy with your current research. Mohinder."

Juliet sat down, remembering her last conversation with Mohinder. Back then, she had wanted to prove herself, to show that she could produce results without Edmund Burke's support, whether academic or political.

She'd wanted research that was her own, and she'd wanted to play the game fairly, without leaning on connections or taking shortcuts. She'd hated the idea that she might have achieved success through anything other than her own ability.

Now, she no longer cared.

She was still playing a game, but now she wanted to win, and by any means necessary. Winning meant getting off this damn island and back to Rachel and Julian, and she wanted it so badly that she could taste it. Seeing her sister on that monitor, alive and glowing and happy and out there somewhere, in the world, something had snapped inside Juliet.

When she married Ed, she had been blinded by his reputation and swayed by his charm. Though she wouldn't have given him the time of day now, as a naive young student she'd been completely taken in.

But she had no illusions about Ben. Her younger self would have run a mile from Edmund Burke if she'd seen him for what he was, whereas now she was obeying Benjamin Linus, and doing so with her eyes open.

She would cheat, bend the rules, break them if necessary: anything, anything to get off the Island.

And being on Ben's side was the best way of getting what you wanted; she'd learned that in the past three years. For a moment Juliet had thought that he had slipped up, when Jack Shephard saw the X-rays and realized that he had a fatal spinal tumor. She'd thought that Ben's plan to bring Jack around to their side had failed.

But of course, he wasn't to be defeated that easily.

_"It's time to move to Plan B."_

_"What exactly is Plan B?"_

_"Tell Austen to plead with Jack for Ford's life. His life for the surgery."_

_"Jack wouldn't agree to that unless you agreed to set Sawyer free, too. He doesn't trust you. He thinks we intend to kill them all eventually, anyway. Why don't you offer to let Austen go, instead?"_

_"First of all, Juliet, I'm offended that you would think my plan ended there. I would never think of anything so crude. And second of all, I have my own reasons for not offering Austen."_

Juliet hadn't asked Ben what his other reasons were. She didn't want to know.

_"What do you want me to do?"_

_"Right now, Jack is still able to think rationally. We need to overcome that obstacle._

_As I said before, tell Austen that we will kill Ford unless Jack does the surgery. Leave the security cameras on, including the ones outside Austen's and Ford's cages. Make sure the monitors are turned on in the viewing room._

_At night, unlock Jack's door, then call him through the intercom and tell him that the door is open. Leave the rest to me."_

Juliet had known what Ben had in mind. And he'd been right.

It hadn't worked out just as they had planned--nobody had anticipated Jack pulling his own con in the middle of the operation--but it had worked. Ben was alive and healthy.

And if he could get Jack to overcome all his loathing and contempt to carry out that surgery, even while believing that the Others would kill him when he'd cured their leader...

It wasn't worth her while to fight him.

Juliet sighed and passed a hand over her eyes. Sometimes she felt as if her skin was stretched so tight that the slightest touch would make her shatter into a million pieces; as if the liquid had been drained out of her, so that she was left as dry and brittle as a dead leaf, ready to be blown away by a puff of wind.

Her thoughts drifted back to Ben's plan.

She had read Jack's file. She knew that, like Mohinder, he had followed his father into the same profession, and yet he didn't seem to have Mohinder's uncertainty about his own ability--perhaps because he had surpassed his father in skill several years ago.

She had observed him in the OR, and she'd noticed that his hand grew more still and sure in its stroke once he began the operation, that his attention became more focused, his breathing more steady. He was completely at ease in that environment.

Whatever insecurities Jack had, they weren't about his abilities as a surgeon, and Juliet envied him for that. She had told Tom not to believe Jack when he threatened them with Ben's death: that he'd never let a patient just die. She hadn't been bluffing. She knew that Jack would save Ben if it was humanly possible. Medicine was a part of him, the one thing he could hold onto when everything else was going to hell.

She could remember a time when she had felt the same certainty, when she could get lost in her work without worrying if a mistake was going to cost another life, when she didn't watch patient after patient bleed out on the table, when telling an expectant mother about her child was a joyful occasion, not the pronouncing of a death sentence.

But she had abandoned her research a long time ago. The one constant she had now was the hope of going home.

Juliet got up, pushing the thought of Jack to the back of her mind. Regrets were useless, "What ifs" were worse than useless. It wasn't worth it.

She had no doubt that he would trust her. She remembered Mohinder's disbelief when she'd told him that part of her success was due to Ed. Jack would think the same way: he'd never believe that someone he considered to be a good person would play dirty, would sell him out.

So be it. It would only make her job easier.

Juliet got up, checked her gas mask one more time, and turned out the light, throwing the paper into the trash on her way to bed. She'd given up on independence.

* * *

_**October 27th, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft, Lower Manhattan**_

Mohinder hadn't thought about Juliet Burke for a long time, not since the day when he'd gone back home to scatter his father's ashes and had found their paper, lying dusty and forgotten in a drawer filled with his old work.

He'd filed it away for future reference, remembering their toast while reflecting that he hadn't done a very good job of living up to it, first running to New York chasing after his father's dreams and then running back to Kanyakumari to scatter his father's ashes, still haunted by a presence that he couldn't shake off, a ghost that drove his work and dreams and every waking thought.

So when Peter showed him his latest drawings, Mohinder's initial reaction was of complete and utter disbelief.

They showed a woman, tall and athletic, standing on a beach with her curly blond hair swept back by the wind, or sitting in front of a fire, staring into the flames, or walking through a jungle, carrying a large stick and a pack on her back. Sometimes she was shown next to a man with long, shaggy blond hair. More often, she was alone.

And despite the reasonable, rational side of his brain that argued that Peter's drawings were not anywhere near conclusive, that indeed, the original decapitated cheerleader in Isaac and Peter's painting hadn't been of Claire, as they'd thought, but of another girl at Claire's school, Mohinder was sure. The woman in the drawings was Juliet.

For once he was grateful for Peter's instinctive reasoning--he was pretty sure that the other man would accept his claim without question.

As it turned out, he was right.

"So, you knew this woman, Dr. Juliet Burke?"

"Yes. At least, I'm fairly certain that it's she."

Mohinder went on to ask what he'd had in mind ever since he'd first seen the pictures.

"Peter, I was wondering if you could find her. Using Molly's ability. She's been missing for years, as far as I know, and it would be a good chance for you to become familiar with your powers again."

"I guess I could have a go," said Peter. "I mean, I will. I'll do it."

Reaching for the atlas and a box of pushpins, he sat down, holding one of the drawings in his left hand and a pin in his right.

"Here we go." He smiled at Mohinder before closing his eyes. "Wish me luck."

Mohinder watched as Peter's entire body became still, as he had seen Molly's do so often before.

Peter put down the drawing and began to flip through the pages of the atlas, eyes still closed. Finally, he stopped at a page showing the Pacific ocean.

Mohinder held his breath as Peter's hand moved in ever-narrowing circles around a patch of blue sea, then faltered. Peter's eyes fluttered open.

"I lost it." Peter brushed his hair out of his eyes in frustration. "Damn it!"

"What's going on?" Mohinder looked up to see Molly walking in from the next room. "Peter, you know you shouldn't swear in front of a kid. What will the social worker say?"

She looked over at the table, and smirked when she saw the map. "You're out of practice. Move over, I'll show you how it's done."

"Oh, great. I've got a nine year old telling me what to do." Peter smiled. "Okay, you're the pro. You do it."

Half an hour later, Mohinder took the pin out of Molly's hand. "It's all right, sweetheart. It's not your fault."

"But I don't understand! It _always_ works for me. This has never happened before!"

Molly looked down at the map, where a dozen pins had been stuck into different places, and pouted in annoyance.

"It's not like with Peter, where his powers go wrong _all_ the time."

"Oh geez, thanks."

"Sorry, Peter. It's just...I'm not losing my power, am I? Is it the virus again?" Molly looked up at Mohinder, a sudden fear growing in her eyes.

"No, of course not, Molly. I think this is just a special case. What does it feel like, when you're trying to find this person?"

"It starts just like always. I can feel her there, out in the world, somewhere. But when I get close, it's like my hand just bounces away, and I can't get to it."

Mohinder stroked her hair, divided between his anxiety and concern for Molly and his puzzlement at what was going on.

He looked across the table at Peter, wondering if the other man had any ideas. But Peter was staring at the map.

"Peter?" When he received no response, Mohinder raised his voice slightly. "Peter? What is it?"

"The pins...Mohinder. Molly's pins...they're all grouped around one place."

"But there's no precise location. Juliet can't have been moving between all those places every time Molly tried to find her."

"Maybe not," said Peter. "But I think this means something. We just have to keep looking."


	4. Brother and Sister

**Brother and Sister**

_**October 28th, 2007**_

_**Petrelli Mansion, Upper East Side, Manhattan**_

It took a few days for Claire to learn what had happened to Peter.

In fact, she found out by accident. Peter had come over for Sunday brunch, which had somehow managed to become an actual family tradition at the Petrellis.

Peter and Claire always insisted on doing the dishes themselves. Nathan had tried telling them that that was what servants were for, but Claire had put her foot down.

_"Cleaning up is the best part, Nathan. It's when everyone lets their hair down, rolls up their sleeves, and starts having fun."_

_"You could have fun in the drawing room, like civilized people who can afford hired help."_

_"Oh please. That's Petrelli style fun. This is ordinary fun. You should try it once in a while."_

He had eventually joined them once or twice, even going so far as to laugh and joke with them, but he'd drawn the line at singing ABBA songs.

That particular Sunday, "Paul McCartney" was blasting from the speakers they'd hooked up to her iPod. (Claire had agreed to try the Scissor Sisters if Peter would listen to Rihanna. She'd expected him to refuse, but he gamely listened to "Umbrella" for two days before giving up, protesting that it gave him a pounding headache.)

"Hey, Peter, do you have that CD you were going to lend me?"

"Yeah, it's in my backpack." He pointed to it. "I'll get it for you later, my hands are covered in soap."

"It's okay, I'll get it." She walked over and unzipped the bag.

"No, Claire, wait--"

But it was too late. Claire was already leafing through the folder of drawings.

"You've been painting." She looked at him in wonder. "You're using your powers."

Peter turned back to the sink and started scrubbing the dishes again. "I guess I am."

"You guess?" Claire felt her amazement turning to anger. "You _guess_? What, you just woke up one morning and thought, 'Hey! You know what would be cool? Let's start being all superpowered again! It'll be just like The Incredibles! Oh, but wait, I'll keep it a secret from Claire, because god knows she'd never care about something like that!'"

"Claire--"

"When did this happen? Why didn't you tell me about this? Peter, look at me."

Slowly, he turned back towards her. "A few days ago. I had one of my visions."

"Of the future? Is something bad going to happen?"

"I don't know. And I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Claire. I just didn't know what would be the right thing to do, and I didn't want to let you down again--"

"Don't give me that!" Claire knew that she wasn't being fair, but she didn't give a damn. All she could feel was rage at Peter keeping her in the dark. "Stop treating me like a little kid. I thought we could talk to each other, Peter. I thought we were family."

"We are."

"Does Nathan know?"

Peter stared into the sink. "Yes."

"Oh, so it was fine for you to tell him, but not me? Don't you trust me?"

"Claire, it's not that. I just wanted to figure out what was going on first."

"We're supposed to figure that stuff out together! That's what friends are for! But you know what, why don't you tell me when you've got it all straightened out. In fact, why don't you tell me _after_ you and Nathan have saved the world. That way, you won't have to worry about me at all!"

And Claire stormed out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

* * *

_**October 28th, 2007**_

_**Peter Petrelli's Apartment, Manhattan**_

"For God's sake, Boone, can't you do anything right?"

"Shut up, Shan. I'm doing the best I can, okay? And you're not exactly contributing anything useful here, so you're in no position to talk."

Peter had been to some weird places in his visions, but this was the first time he'd ended up in the baggage claim section of an airport.

He looked around, trying to match faces to the voices he'd just heard, and spotted the pair waiting around the carousel: a girl in short-shorts and a bright pink tank top, and a boy in ripped jeans and a Metallica t-shirt.

"Are you telling me you still can't find my bag? God, and people say I'm the useless one."

"Would you stop whining for one second? If you just wait, it'll come around."

"Unless the stupid airline lost it. That bitch at the check-in counter had it in for me."

"Oh geez, I wonder why, considering that you made fun of her hair and told her that the fluorescent lighting wasn't doing her any favors."

"Quit blaming this on me, Zac Efron! She wouldn't upgrade us to first class! And speaking of the lighting, it isn't doing me any good either. I can feel my skin drying out. And my moisturizer is _in my bag_."

"Zac Efron?"

"High School Musical? God, get with the program, Bobby Brady."

"Congratulations, Shan. We're not even in the real world, and you've still managed to keep up to date with the latest insults according to E!News."

Peter felt that this dream was rapidly descending into the realms of the ridiculous, and given some of the dreams he'd had, that was really saying something.

"Excuse me." Peter felt that it was time he intervened. "Erm...hi. Sorry, I didn't catch your names. You're Boone, right? And you're...Shan?"

The girl whipped around, a frown on her face, but relaxed into a smile when she saw Peter.

"Shannon. Hi." She held out her hand, and Peter shook it. "And you are?"

"Peter. I'm Peter." He took a step backwards, surprised by Shannon's sudden shift to friendly behavior. "I was wondering--"

"If you could help?" Shannon cut in before Peter could say any more. "Would you, please? My brother here is just being _completely_ inconsiderate. I'm looking for my bag. It's brown leather, with lighter brown straps, tan really, and it's about yay big."

She demonstrated with her hands. "If you could get it for me, I would be _so_ grateful."

Peter looked at Boone, suppressing the urge to laugh. He had to hand it to Shannon, though, it seemed like she was pretty good at getting her own way.

He waited for Boone to say something, but the delay proved to be too much for his sister.

"Oh, forget it. If you can't be bothered to help me, then I'll find someone who _can_!" And she stomped off, leaving the others looking after her.

"I'm sorry," said Boone. "She's tired, she just got off a long flight, and she's having some issues with my mom..."

"It's okay," said Peter. "She's your sister." And somehow, he didn't need to say any more than that--they understood each other.

"So," said Peter. "Why are you here?"

When Boone didn't reply, Peter turned to face him, and gasped in surprise: the other man was now drenched in blood, his chest and arms covered with gashes and open wounds.

"Are you...are you all right? Is that your blood? Are you dead? I'm a nurse, maybe I could help..."

Peter moved forwards instinctively, but stopped when he realized that what he'd just said sounded ridiculous, on top of which he was talking to someone who wasn't there in the physical sense, and hence wouldn't really benefit from medical treatment.

"Who are you?" Peter paused, trying to figure out what to ask next. "Why did you come to me?"

Boone spoke. "I am one of the dead. I am the sacrifice the Island demanded."

"But you must be more than that," said Peter, the indignation in his voice growing as he spoke. "Everyone's more than just a sacrifice. I don't know what the Island is or who sacrificed you, but everyone's more than that. No matter how big the cause, no matter how important it might be to other people. You're a person."

Peter stopped, remembering Kirby Plaza and Nathan being shot in Odessa and the smell of Nathan's skin burning as they flew into the sky.

"What about Shannon?" he asked.

"She died, too. On the Island. But her death was an accident. At least, that's what she says."

"Oh." Peter tried to push back the memories of Nathan lying in the hospital, barely able to breathe, burnt beyond recognition. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"If you're sorry, then you need to help us," said Boone.

"I want to help--" Peter turned away. "You don't understand, Boone. I've thought I could help people, before. It all went wrong. I've hurt people, too. I could be dangerous."

"You said that everyone's more than just a sacrifice. But if you don't help us now, then I won't even be that. I'll have died for nothing. So will Shannon."

"I don't know--the past few days, I've been trying to figure this out, and I don't know what to do."

"You can help us," said Boone. "It's not just me and Shannon. We're all trapped. We've escaped, just for a little while, to come to you now. We all need you. But I'm asking you to do this for Shannon. For my sister."

Peter turned back towards Boone, and for a few seconds the two men looked at each other in silence.

"What do you want me to do?"

"The Island needs us. Those who left have to go back. You have to help them to go back."

Then Peter woke up.

It was still dark outside. He lay awake for a long time, thinking about what he'd seen.

When he'd first gone to see Mohinder a year ago, he'd been convinced that he was meant for a bigger purpose. Something huge, something life-changing. And that conviction had only gotten stronger when he met Hiro on the subway.

But it wasn't until he'd gone to Isaac's and seen that painting of Claire, standing alone on the steps, that his vague dreams and ambitions had crystallized into a single mission, a single person to save.

And now, after talking to Boone, he realized that he couldn't ignore what was happening anymore. Because he was no longer running from abstract terms like faith, and hope, and destiny.

Instead, he'd met a brother, worrying about his sister. And they needed his help.

* * *

_**November 1st, 2007**_

_**Petrelli Mansion, Upper East Side, Manhattan**_

"I can't _believe_ he didn't tell me." Claire flopped down on the sofa, glaring at the fireplace. She'd given Peter the silent treatment for the last few days, answering his questions with stony silence or glares. Once, she'd unbent far enough to give him a shrug, but that was about it.

And today, for the first time since she'd come to stay in New York, he hadn't come by Nathan's house to talk.

The Petrelli family photographs were neatly arranged on the mantelpiece, as usual. Peter and Nathan at the park. Peter and Angela and Nathan. Peter and Nathan on Nathan's wedding day. Nathan and his kids. Peter and Nathan at the beach.

She wasn't in any of them.

Claire was contemplating pulling a Scarlett O'Hara and throwing a vase at the pictures, when she heard someone behind her.

"Hey, Claire." It was Nathan. He came and stood next to her.

She didn't say anything. She'd let him do the talking for once.

"I...er...heard you arguing, earlier. With Peter."

"Yeah? So?"

"I just wanted to tell you that, well." Nathan cleared his throat. "Look, I know how it feels, okay? To worry about him and want him to be happy. And I know he can sometimes be the most infuriating person in the world."

"You got that right."

"Claire, the reason he didn't tell you isn't because he doesn't think you're family. Do you know how badly he wanted you to come here? Meeting you--it meant more to him than you know. He was just worried about you."

Claire felt herself weakening. Damn the Petrellis, and Peter most of all. Why was she such a soft touch when it came to him?

"Yeah, well, he worries about you too, but he didn't keep it a secret from you, did he?"

"He knows how much you've been wanting him to use his powers, that's all. He doesn't always tell me everything, either."

"Oh yeah? Like when?"

"Like last year, when he thought he was going to blow up New York. I tried to help him, but he told me it was too late and it wasn't safe to be around him. Then he ran away with the Invisible Man and spent his time getting beaten up and thrown off buildings and almost getting arrested and god knows what else."

Claire giggled, then remembered that she was supposed to be in Angry Teenager Mode and stopped. "That's our Peter."

"Yeah." Nathan smiled. "I guess we've finally got him back."

Claire looked up at Nathan, surprised by the relief in his voice. "You're happy about this, aren't you? You're _glad_ he's using his powers again."

"Are you kidding me?" Nathan sat down next to her. "Now I have to make sure he doesn't go around getting himself shot or attacked or teleported five years into the future. It's a royal pain in the ass."

Claire shook her head, grinning. "I'm a Petrelli too, you know, Nathan. Or so Peter keeps saying. And you can't lie to me."

"Well, at least I'm used to this kind of anxiety," said Nathan. "I know how to deal with it. Why don't you go talk to him? He's probably off somewhere moping right now."

"Okay."

* * *

_**November 1st, 2007**_

_**Peter Petrelli's Apartment, New York**_

Claire stood in front of the door, took a deep breath, and counted to ten. Then she raised her arm and knocked. The door swung open.

"Claire? What are you doing here?" Peter looked worried. "Look, I'm really sorry--"

She walked into the apartment without waiting for an invitation, then turned around and faced him.

"Let me get one thing clear," she said. "This does not mean you're forgiven. I'm still mad at you. I'm just a little less mad than I was yesterday."

"Okay," said Peter. "So you aren't so angry anymore."

"Only by a tiny, teeny, eensy, infinitesimal margin."

"Oh, good. So..."

"So." Claire crossed her arms. "First of all, you're going to tell me everything that's happened, and everything you're doing, and why you're doing it."

"That sounds fair."

"And you're going to stop worrying about whether or not I can take whatever it is that's coming, because I can. You're going to stop worrying about whether or not you'll hurt me, because you couldn't ever do that, Peter."

She blinked back the tears that had sprung into her eyes. "Not ever."

"And," she said, "You're going to let _me_ worry about _you_. We're family. It's my right."

Peter smiled. "Do you want to talk now?"

"Hell, yes." Claire sat down. "Peter, it's happening, isn't it? It's really happening. We're starting over again."

"I guess we are," he said. "It's kind of scary."

"But it feels right."

"Yeah, it does." Peter reached out and brushed a strand of hair out of Claire's face.

"You know, Nathan's happy about it, too," said Claire. "He moans and groans and complains about these powers, but I think he's glad that you're, well, back to being you."

"I know," said Peter. "He's my brother, I can tell. He'll never admit it, though."

Claire looked down at her hands, inspecting her fingernails. Maybe it was too soon to ask. Then again, she wouldn't know unless she tried.

"You know, Peter, since you're using your powers now, I was thinking..."

"What?"

"Well, the least you could do is take me flying."

Peter laughed, and Claire found herself laughing, too.

She felt almost giddy with happiness--not the quiet, normal kind of happiness she'd known in the past few months, but the heady rush she'd felt when they'd first met, and she'd realized that she wasn't alone.

It was as if all the bad memories had been wiped away, and the only thing left was the two of them, just knowing the joy of finding each other.

"Sure, Claire. We'll go flying," said Peter. "We'll fly over to Nathan's tonight. It'll scare him to death."

"That sounds perfect. Now," she said. "Let's hear about these dreams you've been having."


	5. Family Business

**Family Business**

_November 2nd, 2007_

_**The Petrelli Mansion, Upper East Side, Manhattan**_

Nathan poured himself a glass of water and sat down. Given what he was hearing, he'd have preferred something with alcohol in it, but he'd promised his sons that he would never drink again.

Claire, on the other hand, looked perfectly happy.

"Why can't your prophecies or visions or whatever they are be more helpful?" she asked. "I mean, at least, "Save the cheerleader, save the world" was nice and clear, though it couldn't have hurt to make the if-then clause explicit, seeing as my life was on the line."

She sat down and swung her feet onto the kitchen table, ignoring Nathan's look of disapproval.

"You'd think the universe could provide a mission statement together with deadlines and case files and charts if they expect you to prevent an apocalypse every six months. But no, instead we get cryptic messages and dead guys covered with blood and bible references and islands that nobody's ever heard of."

"Well, at least I got some names," said Peter. "Boone, Shannon, and Yemi. Though Yemi was the guy he was talking to, not the guy himself. And we know a couple of things we have to do, like get these people back to the Island, and build a church. I think."

He shook his head. "Why do these things always sound lame when I say them out loud?"

"_Boone_?" Claire giggled. "The poor kid. Who names their child Boone?"

Nathan looked on as Peter laughed. Great. They thought this was funny. He was starting to regret not telling Peter to simply ignore his dream. What had he been thinking?

"Peter," he said, "Has it occurred to you that these visions might not even be connected? It was only yesterday that Mohinder found a missing woman in your drawings. It could just be a new ability you picked up on the street. You're a hotline for the discontented dead, or something."

"Like the Ghost Whisperer," said Claire. "You could make millions! If, you know, you weren't millionaires already."

"They _are_ connected," said Peter. His voice held the familiar stubborn tone that Nathan had heard a thousand times before. He had missed it more than he was willing to admit, but it still gave him a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Look, I had the visions, okay? And I could feel that they were connected. They're all part of the same story. Even Juliet Burke. I'm sure of it. Boone said we had to return everyone to the Island."

"And," Peter went on, his face brightening as he connected the dots, "in the first vision, I was on an island! Or a beach, anyway. And in a lot of sketches, Juliet was on the beach, too. She was probably on an island--_the_ Island."

"Hmph."

"Come on, Nathan. You're the one who told me to keep at it. You've got to believe me."

Peter looked at him, eyes wide and appealing.

Nathan sighed. "We don't even know where to start, Pete. An island. Great, that's helpful. Only a few of those in the world. A couple of names, though Claire's right: Boone is an unusual name. Boone and Shannon. Boone and Shannon."

He broke off, puzzled. The names seemed familiar. There was something in the back of his mind, a distant memory...

"What? Nathan, what is it?" Peter stared intently at his brother's face before leaning back in astonishment. "You knew them, didn't you? You've met them before."

"It's impossible," said Nathan. "Peter, stop. I _may_ have known _a_ Boone and Shannon. It was a long time ago and they weren't the kinds of people whose names were worth remembering, anyway. But," he said, "was the girl blonde, kind of bratty? And was the guy skinny, young?"

Even before he'd finished speaking, Nathan knew that he was on the right track from watching Peter's reaction: he was practically levitating out of his chair in excitement.

"Okay, then. I may have met them once. Or twice."

* * *

_**June 2000**_

_**Petrelli and Co., Manhattan**_

Shannon had insisted on coming with them to New York. His mom hadn't had much choice other than to grin and bear it: while Adam Rutherford may have been blind some of the tension between his wife and his daughter, he also loved Shannon whole-heartedly, and Sabrina couldn't afford to upset him.

It was ironic, really, that Boone was the one who hadn't wanted to come, and had been dragged along against his will. His mother had told him that the experience would be useful to him in the future.

"If you ever go into business, dear, you will have to be familiar with the legal aspects of running a company. Petrelli & Co. is one of the biggest firms in the whole country: it will be an excellent opportunity for you to observe what some of my work entails."

"Mom, I'm just starting college this year. I seriously doubt that this is going to do me much good."

What he'd really wanted to do was learn to play the electric guitar. He was pretty sure that girls liked musicians, and it couldn't hurt. He might even join a band in college. But girls never seemed to take him seriously--they treated him like a little brother. Or worse, they assumed that he was gay. And Shannon--

He tried not to think about Shannon, with her blond hair and smooth skin and the rosy lips that fell open just a little over pearly white teeth, of the way her cheeks became flushed when she had to use her inhaler.

Shannon always had about a dozen guys hanging around her, ready to pick up her books or help her tie her shoelace or just follow her like a willing slave. Of course, he was in no position to talk.

Boone sank back into one of the leather chairs in the lobby, waiting for his mother to come out of her first meeting; she had said that he would be allowed into some of the afternoon sessions. He watched the older employees walking back and forth across the marble floor, purposeful and efficient, and poked a finger under the collar of his suit, which had been scratching him all morning.

Running a wedding company had never exactly been a childhood dream, but seeing as he didn't have any professional ambitions he'd thought that it would be good to have a safety net. But something in him whispered that going into the family business was just that: a fall back position, a cop out. Besides, he wasn't sure that he fit into this world.

Shannon, of course, was in her element. She was probably on Park Avenue right now, going straight from the Prada store to the Gucci across the street before stopping for a quick latte at the nearest Starbucks, navigating the busy streets in completely impractical shoes.

He wondered if she'd call. For a moment Boone worried that she might have broken a heel or been unable to find a taxi, and hadn't called him because she thought he was in a meeting. Then he came to himself and realized that Shannon wouldn't worry about that. She'd call him even if he were running the meeting.

Boone got up as he saw his mother coming towards him across the marble floor of the lobby. Sabrina Carlyle was talking to Arthur Petrelli, who hardly ever took on his own cases nowadays but made exceptions for anyone he considered wealthy or powerful enough to be worth his time.

"Oh Boone, good, you're here. Arthur, I'd like to introduce you to my son, Boone."

"Nice to meet you, young man."

Boone shook his hand. "It's good to meet you too, sir."

Another man had walked up to them while they were talking, and Arthur Petrelli turned to him with a look of pride. "This is my son, Nathan. He's just entered the DA's office. Nathan, I want you to meet one of our most important clients--and hopefully, one of our most important future clients."

During the introductions Boone studied Nathan Petrelli surreptitiously. He tried to remember what his mother had told him about the Petrelli family on the flight over, and recalled a younger son that she'd warned him not to refer to under any circumstances, and an older son who was expected to succeed in his father's footsteps. This man clearly wasn't the younger brother.

Boone wondered if Nathan felt the same way as he did about going into his dad's line of work. He doubted it: the heir to the Petrelli empire looked confident to the point of arrogance, self assured, and seemed to have no doubts at all about his place in the world. Of course, prosecuting criminals wasn't exactly the same thing as deciding between ecru lace and ivory tulle for a wedding dress.

Boone suddenly realized that his mother and Mr. Petrelli had wandered off to talk to other business associates, leaving him and Nathan standing in the middle of the lobby. He cleared his throat, trying to think of something to say that didn't sound completely idiotic, when he heard a familiar voice behind him. He turned around.

"God, Boone, finally! I've been calling you for, like, ever! Since I walked in the door!" Shannon collapsed in one of the chairs in the lobby, removing her sunglasses with one hand and dumping her shopping bags in the adjacent chair with the other.

"So is, like, all the ridiculously boring legal stuff over now? Because I am, like, so bored. Is there anything to drink in this place? What kind of a building doesn't have a café? Or at least a vending machine?"

She looked up at Boone. "Get me something to drink, okay? Something cold. Preferably non-fat and sugar free."

Boone felt embarrassed. He couldn't help wondering about Nathan's reaction to all this: he was pretty sure that Petrelli wouldn't let a little sister order him around like that.

But Nathan didn't seem to be laughing at him. Instead, he acted as if nothing had happened, saying, "I think my father needs me," before leaving. Boone was grateful for the lie, even if they could all see that Mr. Petrelli was currently engrossed in conversation with another of his lawyers.

"He's kind of cute." Shannon was looking across the floor at Nathan.

"Shan, he's, like, twice your age." Boone sighed, loosening the tie around his neck.

"Fine, whatever." Shannon sulked for a few seconds, then took a closer look at Boone.

"You are okay, right? You didn't miss me while I was gone, did you?" she asked. "Wanna get out of here?"

Boone hesitated. On the one hand, his mother had wanted him to stay. On the other..."All right, Shan. Come on. Let's go."

* * *

_**September 2002**_

_**Manhattan, New York**_

Nathan was on his first whisky and soda when someone sat down next to him at the bar. He glanced at the new arrival out of the corner of his eye.

The main impression he got was that the other man--a boy, really--was almost painfully young, with large doe eyes, untidy long hair, and a desperate air of wanting to prove himself.

"I'll have a beer."

Nathan was pretty sure that the kid wasn't old enough to drink, and the bartender seemed to agree.

"I'll have to see some ID."

The boy sighed in frustration. "I forgot to bring it with me. Look, just give me the drink, okay? I'm not driving. I'm old enough to look after myself, and I'm old enough to drink."

When the bartender remained silent, he threw up his hands. "Fine. Give me a diet soda."

Nathan had the feeling that he'd seen the kid before, but he put down the vague sense of familiarity to missing Peter, who'd been logging extra hours at work to put away enough money before starting nursing school next year.

Nathan watched the ice cubes clink against each other at the bottom of his glass. Peter certainly had a talent for choosing the course of action that was best designed to piss off their father, while playing to his own strengths.

If you thought about it, nursing was the perfect career for him, with the only drawback being that he'd get too emotionally involved with all his patients. It also managed to be sufficiently low-paying and removed from the white-collar respectability of becoming a doctor to scandalize all their relatives.

Of course, it was better than the series of temporary jobs that Peter had taken to pay his way in the two years between finishing college and beginning his training: after the morning when Aunt Francie had rung up, asking if they thought it was wise for Peter to be teaching at a public school in that _particular_ neighborhood, their father had forbidden any of them to mention Peter or anything connected to his sorry excuse for a life in his presence.

Nathan was divided between loyalty to his brother, frustration at Peter's inability to compromise or even try to understand their father's position, and a reluctant admiration for what Peter was doing.

_At least he's trying to make it on his own,_ he thought. _He doesn't have the first idea of how to go about it, but at least he's trying._

Of course, he'd die before he'd admit that to Peter, but Nathan had the uneasy feeling that Peter knew what he was thinking anyway.

Why else would he call Nathan every other day to tell him what had happened at work, how he was getting on, what he hoped to do next? Why else would he be so sure that Nathan cared?

The last time Nathan had tried to talk him out of it, Peter had told him that their entire family was living a parasitic existence and he had no intention of taking part in it anymore.

"Stop being so self-righteous, Pete," he'd said, no longer bothering to conceal his irritation. "You're no better than the rest of us."

"But you are," said Peter, turning the tables on Nathan. "I know you're better than that, so don't try to pretend that you're not. You won't be like Dad and the rest of the lawyers in our family."

Nathan had realized that he was never going to win the argument, and left before Peter could rope him into prosecuting a chemical company for destroying the environment, or working for Amnesty International free of charge.

He took a sip of his drink and stole another glance at the boy next to him. He looked like the activist type, too. He also looked like a New Yorker. Odds were that he and Peter had been to a couple of the same rallies.

Just then the boy's cellphone rang.

"Hello? Shannon, is that you?"

All of a sudden, Nathan knew that he _had_ seen the kid before. And his sister.

He remembered what his father had said about Sabrina Carlyle's wedding empire, and her plans to set up her son as a Chief Operating Officer in the company. He wondered if Boone had taken his mother's offer, or whether he'd struck out on his own, like Peter.

"Slow down, Shan. What is it?" Boone was too wrapped up in what his sister was saying to notice that Nathan was now staring at him.

"Yeah. What do you want me to do? Should I ask her? Okay. How much? Sure. Of course." He spoke without the slightest hesitation.

"Of course I will, Shan. Don't worry about it. No, I'll make sure she knows it's not for you. Don't worry. It'll be okay." He snapped the cellphone shut and rushed out of the bar.

Nathan watched him leave, and put out a hand to stop the bartender from yelling after him.

"I'll pick up the tab. Let him go."

* * *

_**November 2nd, 2007**_

_**Petrelli Mansion, Upper East Side, New York**_

Nathan finished telling his story and sat back, waiting for Peter and Claire to respond.

"So you knew Boone Carlyle."

"It wasn't a big deal. We met. Twice. We barely even talked," said Nathan. "It doesn't help us."

"You never know. It might be the reason why he came to us," said Peter. "It can't hurt to find out as much about this guy as we can."

He walked over to Claire's laptop and brought up the Google search page. After a few minutes, with Claire looking over his shoulder, Peter turned around.

"Here's what I've got. He was a COO at his mom's company, Carlyle Weddings," Peter said, ignoring Claire's smirk at that piece of information.

"So he did go into the family business," said Nathan. He was glad that he hadn't had to ask--he didn't want to appear too enthusiastic about all this.

"Yeah," said Peter. "Why, is that important?"

"Not really. Just something I was wondering about."

"He had a sister...a step-sister, actually. Shannon Rutherford."

"She was his step-sister?" Nathan was surprised--they'd seemed so much like brother and sister.

"Mmmhmm. Is _that_ important?"

"Er...No. Probably not. Go on."

"Well, that's pretty much all there is, apart from his age and stuff like that, except..."

"Except what?"

Even before Peter spoke, Nathan knew what was coming.

Peter had that look on his face, the one that meant he'd fixated on another mission, one that would most likely involve danger and villains and things exploding and the possibility of power overloads, and he, Nathan, would spend hours if not days trying to stop his little brother from hurtling headlong into another insane adventure before giving up and joining him.

He didn't even want to think about what would happen when Claire insisted on coming along, as she most surely would.

Nathan was simultaneously relieved and terrified by Peter's enthusiasm. After Peter had given up on his powers, he had at least been able to stop worrying that his brother would die in some horrific accident; now he was back to spending his spare time imagining all the different ways that he could get into trouble.

It was a long list.

On the other hand, in the past few days Peter had looked and sounded and felt alive in a way that he hadn't for a long time.

All things considered, Nathan thought, the relief won out over the terror.

But he was still going to do everything in his power to stop Peter and Claire from going overboard. If he didn't keep a check on them they'd most likely end up all over the news. He could see the headlines now: _The Super Flying Petrelli And His Indestructible Niece: Former Congressman Nathan Petrelli Taken Into Custody For Questioning._

Nathan sighed and resigned himself to the inevitable.

"Except what, Peter?"

"Boone Carlyle died in that plane crash. You know, the famous one a couple of years back. Oceanic Flight 815."

He remembered, all right. It had been the leading item on the news for weeks. Nathan suddenly thought of another reason why the accident seemed so familiar.

"Don't you know one of the survivors? What's his name, the doctor?"

"He was on the staff for a few months at the hospital when I was finishing up my nursing training. As a visitor," said Peter, but he answered absent-mindedly; Nathan could see that his thoughts were elsewhere. He bounded up and ran towards the telephone.

"Erm...Peter? Pete? Who are you calling?"

Peter waved away Nathan's inquiries.

"Mohinder? Mohinder, are you there? It's me. Listen. Do you still have that map where Molly tried to find Juliet? Yeah? Could you read off the coordinates of Molly's pins?"

Peter grabbed a pen and some paper and began scribbling, then picked up the nearest map.

"Yeah. Yeah, Mohinder. I'm still here. Look, I think I know why all the pins were grouped around that one spot. Remember Oceanic Flight 815? I think it's where the plane went down. I think...I think they crashed on an island."


	6. Bonus Tracks

**Bonus Tracks**

_**November 4th, 2007**_

_**Peter Petrelli's Apartment, Manhattan**_

When the fourth and final visitor arrived, it wasn't the way Peter had expected. One minute he was fast asleep, the next he was greeted by the sound of music blasting from the stereo.

Peter stumbled into the living room to find a short, scruffy man sprawled on his sofa in full rock concert gear, from ripped T-shirt and jeans to black nail polish, playing air guitar and singing along to a CD that Peter thought he'd thrown out years ago.

"Finally!" the other man said, sitting up. "You know, mate, for someone with a psychic connection to the astral plane you're a pretty heavy sleeper."

Peter felt like he'd never properly sympathized with Scrooge while listening to Nathan read _A Christmas Carol_ as a kid. He switched off the stereo, drawing a yelp of protest from the visitor.

"Oi! That was our biggest hit! Show some respect for the music, mate. Besides, it's only vision music. Not like it'll wake the neighbors, or anything."

"I can't hear myself think. Besides, I thought I'd thrown that CD away."

Peter stopped when he realized what he'd just heard.

"Wait..._our_ CD? You were in DriveShaft?" He thought for a little while before he got it. "You're one of the Pace brothers?"

"Charlie, yes. And for your information, I am a bloody rock god. I _was_ DriveShaft. Well, me and my brother Liam, but I was the creative force. I wrote the songs, the lyrics, the melodies, _and_ I played bass. Guitar, on a couple of tracks. He just sang and looked pretty. The Gallaghers had nothing on us."

Charlie looked reproachfully at Peter. "And what do you mean, you were going to chuck our CD? You were our target demographic. Young, earnest, emo..."

Peter interrupted him with a sigh. He tried to remember how Claire had defined "emo" when he'd asked her.

"I'm not emo. My hair just grows this way. And the times I cut myself were just experiments with my healing ability. And I don't wear eyeliner. And...that isn't the point."

"Indeed not, my friend," said Charlie, as he strutted over to the fridge and grabbed a beer. Tilting his head back, he chugged a few mouthfuls before turning back to Peter.

"So, mate, why don't we get down to business?"

Peter sat down on the sofa. "I heard about your death. On the news. You were on the flight, weren't you? Oceanic 815. Your band made a comeback there, for a while."

"Bingo."

Charlie flicked the bottle cap into the sink.

"Bloody typical, innit? Turns out all you have to do to boost record sales is die tragically in a plane crash. But not much use earning millions from your death if you're not around to enjoy it, right? And now I'm just hanging around until all the screw-ups before, after, and around that bloody accident get sorted. We have to go see our old friends who got off the Island, of course. But you're going to help us, too."

"That's what I figured, from what Boone said. He was a lot more cryptic, though."

"Ah, Boone. Poor sod. He got that whole, 'Man of Mystery' routine from Locke."

"Locke? Was he the guy in the confessional?"

"Confessional? Locke? Doesn't sound like him to me."

"I don't know who it was, but he was talking to his brother. He called him Yemi. And he left me a stick covered with inscriptions in the ground, in front of a half-built church. At least, I think it was a church."

Charlie's expression changed from confusion to understanding. "Ah, I see. That was Eko."

"Echo?"

"Eko. E-K-O. Eko. And it is a church. We were building it together. Only he died. Then I died. Nobody left to carry on the project."

Peter had a thousand more questions he wanted to ask, including just how one would go about building a church, but Charlie went on before he could interrupt.

"Look mate, I'm just here to deliver my message. And that's this: you've got to get Aaron back to his mum."

Peter was startled--this wasn't what he'd been expecting. That is, if he'd been expecting anything, which was probably a foolish thing to do. And wasn't Aaron the baby who'd been rescued with his mother?

He waited for Charlie to explain, but the other man was staring wistfully at the jewel case of his CD. Charlie swigged the last of his beer and sighed.

"Those were the days, my friend. Those were the days."

He flipped through the endnotes, reading through some of the lyrics. "We had a new hit in the works, you know. Would've been Number One on the charts."

"Really?" Peter suddenly felt sorry for Charlie. He had been so talkative, so buoyant and full of life, that for most of their conversation Peter had forgotten that he was dead.

"What was it about?"

"It was about us. Me and Liam. Brothers. Everlasting love, and all that."

"I'd like to have heard that." Peter thought back to his first vision, and wondered if Eko had told Charlie about Yemi.

"I think Eko would have liked it, too," he said. "It must have been great--the music, I mean. Having something special you could share. Just the two of you. Like you could do something together that you could never do alone."

"It was. That was the point of the song, too. Had a hell of a hook: "Together now, we can be saved." Charlie hummed the tune to himself.

"You could still finish that song," said Peter. "I mean, from what I've seen they have music in the afterlife, right? And...I didn't mean that earlier. You know. About throwing away your CD."

"Fantastic." Charlie grinned, tilting his head to one side. "Look, mate, I like you, so I'm going to give you one more piece of advice. A bonus track, if you will. Your power, it's like music."

"Huh?"

"Well, you need talent, that's in your genes, but you've also got to practice. You don't think I got to be in DriveShaft by sitting around on my arse all day feeling sorry for myself because the tunes didn't just pop into my head, did you? "You all, everybody" didn't write itself, you know. How d'you think you're going to help us if you don't learn to use those superpowers of yours?"

"I haven't used them for a long time. I didn't want to."

"I don't reckon Mariah Carey wanted to sing again after _Glitter,_ either, but she got right back on her stilettos and pumped out _The Emancipation of Mimi,_ and look at her now!"

"I...guess so?"

"I know so," said Charlie. "You've got some time before the big guns kick in, Peter. It's the eye of the storm now. Just sit back and wait a bit, and practice in the meantime."

"Thanks," said Peter. He smiled, remembering another eccentric foreigner who'd wandered into apartment and helped himself to the beer before telling him how to make the most of his powers. He was glad that Charlie hadn't tried to hit him with a stick to make him focus. "That's great advice, actually."

"Should be, I'm an expert," said Charlie. "Listen, mate, I'd give you an autograph, probably worth a mint nowadays, but I can't, seeing as I'm dead and all. Anyway, I'd better get going, then. Places to go, people to haunt. Toodles."

A moment later, Peter woke up.

He walked over to his closet, got out a dartboard, and hung it on a spare hook in the wall before sitting about ten feet away, holding the darts in his hand.

"Okay," he said. "Telekinesis first. Let's go."


	7. Visiting Hours

**Visiting Hours**

_**November 27th, 2007**_

_**John Locke's Apartment, California**_

"Hello, John."

"Ben."

Locke didn't wonder how Benjamin Linus had found his new address in California, or how he'd gotten into Locke's house. Ben always found a way. And he never got caught.

Without asking, Locke pulled out the chess set and began to make tea. He'd played poker with Jack and backgammon with Hurley and Risk with Sawyer, but with Ben, it was always chess.

"Nice to see you out of the hospital." Ben sat down at the table. "Been keeping yourself busy?"

"I think you already know the answer to that question." Locke concentrated on the board. He would have to sacrifice a pawn. But it would protect his queen.

"A bold stroke, John," said Ben, taking the pawn. "I see your style hasn't changed."

He waited for Locke to make his move. "I, on the other hand, prefer to hedge my bets." He castled, moving his king out of danger.

Seeing that Locke wasn't going to answer his question, Ben changed the subject. "Jeremy Bentham. Interesting choice."

"I thought it was appropriate."

"What do your old friends think of it? Or have you not seen them since you got back?" Ben held up a hand, forestalling Locke's reply. "I admit, I do know the answer to that question. But humor me."

"I've been to see some of them. Jack. And Hurley, and Kate."

"I see." Ben leaned forwards.

"And you're going to somehow convince your now alcoholic former friend, or rather, fellow castaway, that you have to go back to the Island he and _his_ friends spent so much time and effort trying to escape? And you're just going to charter a plane and fly to the unknown location where that Island now is? Or was, or will be, depending on the temporal shifts around the region?"

"I knew that convincing Jack wasn't going to be easy."

"On the contrary. I think you will find that our reluctant hero is more open to persuasion than he once was... But tell me, have you thought about any of the practical issues I mentioned, or not? How exactly do you think you're going to get back to the Island? A small detail, I know, but has it crossed your mind at all?"

For once, Ben appeared genuinely curious.

"The Island will show us a way."

"Your faith is touching. And I won't say that it is unfounded." Ben moved his bishop across the board.

"But you should remember what I told you about Widmore. I'm dealing with him in my own way, but he is still a danger to you."

"I remember," said Locke, a trace of sarcasm in his voice. "Thanks for the suggestion."

"I'm going to pretend that your gratitude is entirely sincere, John, since I _am_ going to give you some suggestions that will help you immensely," said Ben.

"Tell me," he continued, taking Locke's castle. "What do you know about your old nurse, Peter Petrelli?"

* * *

_**September 2007**_

_**New York University Medical Center**_

Over the years, Locke had known his fair share of nurses.

Peggy, the redhead who helped him get ready for the kidney transplant, always bubbling over with anecdotes about her extensive family. He'd found her stories about her three brothers and their children amusing then, when he'd been exhilarated over finally meeting his father. If he'd met her afterwards he'd most likely have taken to sedating himself just to escape the sound of her voice.

Ann, the efficient and no-nonsense ICU nurse who'd monitored him right after his fall, when it had been touch and go and he'd spent most of his days drifting in and out of consciousness, everything a hazy blur of pain and fear and noise and more pain and wishing he could die just so it would end.

He hadn't thanked Ann afterwards (he didn't see how he could feel grateful for anything after snapping his spine in half and being condemned to a goddamn wheelchair for the rest of his life), but he had unconsciously appreciated the firm touch of her hands, her cool capable attitude.

And Matthew Abbadon, the man who'd told him about the Aboriginal walkabout, whom he now realized probably wasn't a nurse at all. And all the physical therapists and orderlies and ER nurses that had whisked in and out of his life in his various stays at the hospital, ranging from the completely incompetent to the overly emotional to the overly detached.

So he had seen enough to know that Peter Petrelli was exceptionally good at his job. A natural.

On the other hand, he wasn't much good at chess. Or backgammon. Or Risk.

"Peter, that's a foolish move. You're leaving your queen completely undefended."

He'd tried explaining the basic logical principles to Peter, but somehow they never sank in. Locke won most of their games, except for a few occasions where Peter's seemingly haphazard play resulted in his victory in the most spectacular fashion. Locke would have put it down to sheer dumb luck, but he'd played enough chess to know that luck didn't play any part in a game's outcome. So he wasn't sure what it was.

Once he'd gotten bored and asked Peter whether he wanted to play cards, but he had laughed and refused. Maybe poker wasn't his game.

After the first few days Locke wasn't playing to win. That was easy enough even with minimal attention. Instead he played so that they could keep talking.

Or rather, so that he could keep talking. Peter was a good listener, and Locke couldn't resist returning to his favorite subjects of hunting and tracking and military strategy--especially not after he realized that Peter actually took him seriously. Everyone else had humored him when he described how to kill boar and trap deer and build hides in the woods.

Of course, before the Island that had been pure fantasy. But for a few months he'd been the real thing, and it was a shock to come back from that and realize that nobody believed him, even now.

Nobody, that is, except Peter.

Locke had soon learned to keep his mouth shut with the other nurses, but Peter demanded to hear more of Locke's war stories, and sometimes brought up questions himself. He'd wanted to hear about the trebuchet Locke had built, and how to make a bow and arrow, and how to use every part of a wild boar without any waste, by rendering its fat and treating its hide and carving its tusks into knives.

Locke had even thought about telling Peter his biggest secret of all.

_"Do you know what a walkabout is, Peter?"_

_"No, I've never heard of it."_

_"It's a journey of spiritual renewal, in which one derives strength from the earth and becomes inseparable from it."_

_"Wow. It sounds amazing. Have you been on one?"_

_"I have indeed."_

_"What was it like?"_

_"Indescribable."_

One day, Ben had come to visit him. Peter didn't say, "You have a visitor," or "There's someone here to see you," with the, "There now. Isn't that nice?" tone that so many people used when addressing invalids.

Instead he said, "Someone called Ben Linus is here: he says he's an old friend of yours."

Then he asked, "Do you want to talk to him?"

* * *

_**November 27th, 2007**_

_**John Locke's Apartment, California**_

"You didn't come to New York to see me, did you? It was to see Peter."

"Now, John, jealousy doesn't suit you," said Ben. "And as usual, you fail to see that my visit could have had a dual purpose, which it did. Firstly, to see how you were doing. And secondly, as you stated, to observe your nurse."

He sat back in his chair. "I had heard the stories, of course, but I always prefer to confirm these things in person."

"Stories?"

"You still don't get it, do you?"

Ben's expression was never easy to read, but Locke thought that he looked pleased.

"You said that the Island would show you a way. Well, it did. It took you to New York. It placed you under the care of the only person in the entire world who can get all your friends back to the Island."

"Peter? Is going to return them to the Island?" Locke had been puzzled; now he was infuriated. He'd had enough of Ben's tricks. "Don't be ridiculous. I spent two weeks with him, and he's a nice kid, but--"

"John, John. I thought you had more discernment than that," said Ben. "Surely you must have noticed that there was something, shall we say, 'different' about Peter Petrelli? Surely you of all people know that appearances can be deceiving? Believe me when I tell you that I am not joking. Believe me when I say that I would not speak so lightly of the Island, and its survival."

Ben took a piece of paper out of his pocket. "This is his telephone number. You should call him, and soon. Before it's too late."

Locke took the paper from Ben. A part of him wanted to keep resisting, wanted to stop himself from giving into so quickly. But another part knew that he would call Peter as soon as Ben walked out of the door.

"What will I say to him? How do I get him to trust me? He's going to think I'm a lunatic."

"Oh no." Ben was already at the door. "You see, John, he's a believer. Just like you."

When Ben had left, Locke dialed the number he had been given, and waited for someone to pick up. Soon he heard a familiar voice on the other end of the line.

"Hello?"

"Peter. This is Jeremy. I know I'm calling you out of the blue, but--" Locke paused. But what? Why exactly was he calling? How could he even begin explaining everything?

"I needed to talk to you."

"Sure."

Locke thought about beginning with his own life history, or the plane crash, or the Island, or the Oceanic Six, or Ben. In the end, he didn't start with any of these.

Instead he said, "Peter. I have some things to tell you that might sound very...strange. So I'm going to ask you this."

He took a deep breath. "Do you believe in miracles?"

For a second there was no reply, and Locke thought that Peter was going to hang up. Or worse, patronize him before letting him down gently. This was the real world, after all, not the Island, and such things--miracles and salvation and unquestioning faith--didn't belong in the real world. But then Peter spoke.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I do."


	8. How to win friends and influence people

**How to Win Friends and Influence People**

_**November 28th, 2007**_

_**Petrelli Mansion, Upper East Side, New York**_

Peter hung up the phone. "Mohinder wants us to meet at his place. He doesn't want to leave Molly alone."

Nathan looked up. "So he's in?"

"Yeah," said Peter. He sat down next to Claire at the kitchen table. "At least, he's thinking about it. He wants to know what happened to Juliet."

"Okay," said Nathan. "Good."

He got up, and started pacing the floor. Claire knew he had something on his mind--he'd been preoccupied all day.

He stopped walking and turned to face them, leaning back against the counter. "Maybe we should call Matt."

"Matt Parkman?" Claire definitely hadn't been expecting that. "Why?"

"I worked with him last year," said Nathan. "He's a cop--could come in useful in a tight spot. And we're going to be dealing with total strangers--having a mind-reader around can't hurt."

"But Peter can do that," said Claire.

"Not really," said Peter, shaking his head. "I mean, sure, I can practice, but it's still kind of hard for me."

He turned back to Nathan. "He's not living with Mohinder anymore, is he? Do you think it'll be okay if--"

"I'll handle it," said Nathan, walking over to the phone. "He owes me a favor for helping him with his dad--can't hurt to ask, anyway."

* * *

_**November 28th, 2007**_

_**Mohinder Suresh's Apartment, New York**_

"Wait, so you're saying it was all a lie? The crash, the six survivors, everything we heard on TV, everything we read in the papers, all of it?" Matt's voice was raised in disbelief.

He sat down at Mohinder's kitchen table, which was covered with newspaper clippings detailing the events surrounding the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 and the survival of the Oceanic Six.

Claire was busy reading up on what the five adult survivors had been doing in the years after the accident (if "accident" was the right word to use, and according to Peter, it wasn't).

Peter appeared to have taken Charlie's advice to heart: he was trying to use telekinesis to sort their notes and pour cups of coffee for everyone.

Nathan was staring into space, his expression unreadable.

Matt was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The only thing he knew for sure was that Peter had been having weird visions and was convinced that they had to save the world.

So business as usual, then. He looked at the headlines scattered across the table: it was hard for him to make out the words, but he could remember the ones that Mohinder had read out earlier.

_Oceanic Flight 815 Crashes: No Survivors Found_.

_Wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815 Discovered_.

_The Oceanic Six: Miraculous Story of Survival and Rescue._

_Sun-Hwa Kwon Takes Over Paik Industries In Surprise Acquisition_

_Hugo Reyes Arrested After High Speed Car Chase._

_Verdict of the Kate Austen Trial Announced: Not Guilty!_

Matt knew that he was supposed to be worrying about the crash victims that kept visiting Peter, and now this guy who was insisting that Peter had to take the Oceanic Six back to the Island, and the fact that the entire story of the crash had been a giant lie from beginning to end, and what they were going to do about all of this.

But right now, the only thought in his mind apart from disbelief was,

_Wow. There's actually a group of people out there whose lives are as weird as ours. Well, maybe not as weird. But close._

He was brought back to earth when Nathan spoke, and it took him a second to realize that he was answering Matt's original question.

"It was all a lie, Matt. All of it. That is, if what Peter's patient told him is true,"

"John Locke," Peter interrupted.

"If what Locke told him is true," Nathan continued, "and judging from Peter's dreams or visions or whatever they are, it looks like it is."

He passed a hand over his eyes. "A lie on that scale...and they pulled it off. Of course, they had the glamour of being long-lost survivors to cover some inconsistencies, and they had time to coordinate their stories, but still..."

He appeared impressed despite himself.

"And if Widmore is involved...The size of the settlements was undisclosed, but just from the size of Austen's and Reyes' homes, and Kwon's takeover of Paik Industries, and even accounting for the usual journalistic exaggeration, we're looking at tens, possibly hundreds of millions. Not to mention the strings that must have been pulled to fake an entire plane crash, complete with bodies. We're up against something huge."

"So what should we do?"

"Isn't that obvious?" Peter let the coffee cup fall back onto the table with a clatter. He sounded surprised. "We know what we have to do. John told us. We have to find the Oceanic Six and take them back to the Island. Well, that's the first step, anyway. We also have to get Aaron back to his mom and finish building Eko's church."

Mohinder shook his head, looking up from his paper. "But Molly can't find the island. She says she can feel its presence, but every time she gets near the region on the map, she loses control and her hand starts wandering all over the place."

He went on before the others could interrupt. "I'm not going to ask her to try again. Whatever forces we're dealing with here, they are powerful. And most likely dangerous. Molly trusts us to keep her safe, and after what happened with Matt's father, I'm not taking any more risks."

Matt dropped his eyes under Mohinder's glare. Molly didn't seem to have suffered any ill effects after being trapped by his father, and she certainly didn't hold it against him. But it had taken Mohinder a long time to trust Matt alone with Molly afterwards.

Hell, it had taken a while before Matt could trust himself--he'd moved out and found his own place soon after getting back from Texas, just to give them all some space. A part of him had been relieved when he'd been able to let Mohinder take on most of the responsibility of looking after Molly.

He looked at the others, wondering if they also blamed him for what he'd done, but Nathan merely looked uncomfortable, and Claire was still engrossed in her notes. Peter sighed.

"There has to be some way back, otherwise the Island wouldn't be sending us all these messages. We're missing something."

"Or maybe we're on a fool's errand." Mohinder's impatience finally broke through. He threw his newspaper down on the table, and turned to face Peter.

"Do you honestly believe that an _island_ is sending us messages? It's a landmass, not a sentient being! And what do we have to go on? More of your visions? The ramblings of one of your patients, who could be living out his own frustrated fantasies through you while trapped in a wheelchair? What makes you think that this means anything?"

"Peter's visions have always meant something," said Nathan. "We haven't always known what they meant, but they're not nonsense."

"All right then. Suppose this _does_ mean something. What makes you think that taking these people back to this island is the right thing to do?"

"Mohinder's right." Matt was surprised at himself: he hadn't intended to say anything, but somehow found himself speaking up.

"Peter, we have no idea if this guy, Locke or whatever his name is, and these ghosts...what if they're the bad guys? What if this island is...is evil? I saw this guy, Hugo Reyes, when the department arrested him, and he's gone crazy. Totally wacko."

Matt looked around the room for support. He knew Mohinder shared his doubts, and in the brief time that he'd spent with Nathan, he'd found him to be a pretty reasonable guy--certainly a lot smarter than he, Matt.

On the other hand, everything he'd seen told him that the Petrellis were big on family loyalty, and judging from the expression on Claire's face, she'd inherited that particular trait.

He knew that his opinion wasn't going to be popular, but he had to say it, no matter what the others thought.

"You..." Matt took a deep breath, then looked Peter straight in the eye. "You made a mistake, before, listening to Adam. Maybe you're making another one now."

Peter flushed, then went pale at Matt's last words. Nathan got up to stand behind Peter, putting a hand on his brother's shoulder before speaking.

"Adam's meant to deceive us, manipulate us. He saved me to make Peter trust him. He was evil. But Hiro wasn't. Listening to him was the right thing to do. If Peter hadn't gone to save Claire, Sylar would have gotten her power and we'd all be dead. We don't know which category John Locke belongs to. Not yet."

"And at least Peter never meant to hurt anyone," said Claire, unable to restrain herself any longer. "Last time I checked, _you_ were the one who broke into a house where there were kids and a sick woman and held them hostage and almost _blew them up._"

"Claire." Nathan didn't raise his voice, but it was enough. Claire crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, sulking.

Matt didn't say anything. What was there to say? He didn't doubt that Peter meant well. But sometimes, that wasn't enough. They needed more to go on than just a gut feeling.

"Matt."

He realized that Peter was talking to him, and looked up.

"I know it sounds insane. But I learned from...from what happened with Adam. I went to see John, and I read his mind, and he believes everything he's saying, whether or not it's right."

Matt's fears eased a little. He leaned forward, listening to the rest of Peter's words with more interest.

"And it's not like when Adam saved Nathan. I don't owe John anything. I'm not saying that we should just jump in, no questions asked. But I don't think we'll ever know for sure unless we go to the Island."

"There's something going on here. These people...we're all connected. Nathan knew the first guy who came to visit me. And Mohinder, you knew Juliet, and I think she's trapped on this island. We could find her. We could help her get back to the real world, to her family, to her life. Don't you want to save her?"

Mohinder shifted uneasily in his seat, considering this side of the argument.

Peter turned back to Matt. "You've met Hugo Reyes. And I knew Dr. Shephard, and John Locke was my patient. All this--they're not coincidences. They can't be."

"And Matt, if Charlie and John were telling the truth, then the survivors...they're seeing ghosts, every day. People they knew, people they buried. If we can help them, I think it's worth trying. They need us."

Matt sat back, thinking over what Peter had said. He hadn't seen it that way before. It was true--they had managed to help people. Even Molly: he'd found her using his powers. He remembered Ted Sprague, grieving for his wife in the hospital--it had felt good, helping to ease his pain. Maybe he could do that again.

He glanced at Nathan. "You really think I can help?"

The other man nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Like I said, mind-reading's pretty damn useful."

"I guess," said Matt. He turned back to Peter. "Okay, I'm listening."

Peter looked around at the others, then went on speaking in a low voice, as if thinking out loud.

"There must be some way, we just haven't found it yet. I mean, if the Island _can_ move, then we should probably teleport. I don't know if we could fly there. But even if Hiro helped us, how could we do that without knowing where it is?"

Claire uncrossed her arms and rested her chin on her hand, frowning. "Molly said she could 'feel' the people on the island, she just can't get it on the map." she said. "If Hiro could feel it, too, that might work, right? But how would Hiro do that? You'd need to do both at once. Locate and teleport."

She stopped short, staring at Peter.

"You'd need to do both."

"That's it!" Peter laughed with the excitement of discovery. "Of course! We can get there if we use both powers at once."

He stood up and started pacing up and down.

"Wow. Good thing I've been practicing--but I still haven't tried two at once. Maybe I should start small? Like try to find Nathan in the next room and teleport in there, maybe."

"Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm in," said Claire. "And don't even think about leaving me behind."

"Wait a minute." Mohinder put out his hand in protest. "If Juliet is trapped on this island, then I agree--we have to find her, and bring her back. And I'm willing to help you to contact these people, and practice with your powers."

He bit his lip. "But I can't commit to more than that. Molly needs me here. The last time I left her alone, she ended up being taken hostage by Sylar. I can't risk anything like that happening again."

"It's okay," said Peter. He turned to Matt. "What about you?"

Matt realized that they were all waiting for his opinion. He had to admit, it all felt a lot less crazy than it had a few hours ago. And if they needed him--if he could really be useful--

"Okay," he said. "I'm in. If what Peter said is right, maybe talking to the survivors would help us sort this all out. I mean, it's pretty clear that there's _something_ going on."

"I agree," said Nathan. "For now, it looks like we should take these people back to the island. But we're not committing ourselves to anything. We should contact the Oceanic Six, or Oceanic Five really, since one of them's just a kid. We have to find out what they're doing now, and decide what to do next."

* * *

_**November 28th, 2007**_

_**Somewhere in New York**_

Ben turned off the microphone.

_Well done, Peter,_ he thought. _I couldn't have done it better myself._

He had to hand it to the boy--his skills of persuasion were impressive. Not an approach he'd ever care to try himself, of course. But it got results.

Ben reflected that if Peter Petrelli ever realized how powerful he was, he'd have an opponent to contend with. It was lucky for him that the boy's very nature rendered him relatively ineffectual.

The poor creatures were so proud that they'd figured out how to get to the Island all by themselves; when really, the possibilities inherent in combining Peter's abilities should have been immediately obvious to anyone with half a brain.

He had been prepared to step in with a few hints if this connection proved to be too difficult for Suresh and the Petrellis, but luckily, no further intervention had been necessary. People executed an idea so much more readily if they believed that they'd thought of it first. Irrational and inefficient, of course, but then, most people _were_ irrational and inefficient.

Ben walked out into the street and hailed a cab. His work here was done, for now. It was time to get back to California.

* * *

_**December 1st, 2007**_

_**Mohinder Suresh's Apartment, New York**_

They were still busy collecting information when Claire spotted Jeremy Bentham's obituary in a California newspaper.

Mohinder leaned over Claire's shoulder to read the small print. "It says here that his death was a suicide."

"It wasn't a suicide, was it, Nathan?" Peter asked.

"No, it wasn't."

Claire watched the brothers exchange glances, before Nathan turned back to his notes. She wondered why they were so sure that Bentham--no, Locke, she kept forgetting that--hadn't killed himself. Then again, given what she knew of the Petrellis, maybe she shouldn't have been surprised.

"I think we should go to the funeral," said Peter. "Or at least, I should go."

"I'll come with you," said Claire.

Nathan looked up again. "No."

"Nathan, I don't think he had any living relatives. I should go. And if Claire wants to come--"

"No," said Nathan. "Peter, someone might be keeping an eye on the funeral home. Pa wasn't that close to Widmore, but I do know that he's bigger than Linderman, bigger than Bishop, bigger than Deveaux. We can't risk him suspecting what we're up to."

"Nathan's right," said Matt. "We've got other things to worry about right now."

Peter shook his head. "I can turn invisible. They won't see me. I've been practicing--I'm pretty sure I can do it now. I won't get caught, I swear."

"Jesus, Pete." Nathan snapped his file shut in frustration. "Is this really that important to you?"

"Yeah." Peter leaned forwards and put a hand on Nathan's shoulder, looking him in the eyes. "Nathan, I'm going. I have to."

Claire crossed her fingers under the table, waiting for Nathan's response. Finally, he said, "You're sure you can handle this."

"Yes."

Nathan sat back, letting out a deep breath. "All right," he said. "Just...be careful. And you're going alone."

Claire opened her mouth to protest, but something in Nathan's voice made her hesitate.

"You've never even met Locke," he said. "There's no reason for you to be there. We're dealing with dangerous people. This isn't some game where you get to run around playing action hero."

Claire glared at him. "I _know_ that. That's not why--"

"I'm sorry, Claire," said Nathan. He went on, more gently, "Not this time."

Claire stared at him for a few moments, before finally nodding. She looked around at the others, and saw that Matt and Mohinder had been watching their conversation. They looked slightly nervous, and she smiled at them reassuringly.

She got up, and moved over to the kitchen. "Well, if they've started killing people off, then maybe we should work faster. Coffee, anyone?"


	9. Identity Theft

**Identity Theft**

_**December 2nd, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft, Lower Manhattan**_

"Can you see me now?" Peter concentrated on the pen, willing it to lift off the table.

"No, you're still invisible," said Mohinder, nodding encouragement. "Keep going, Peter, you're doing fine."

"Okay." Peter tried to remember Sylar--the faceless man in the baseball cap and black trench coat in the hallway at Claire's school, his feeling of terror when he'd turned to see Sylar standing right behind him at the top of the stadium steps, the pain of having his head sliced open, a deep and chilling voice wanting to know how everything worked.

The pen lifted slowly into the air, then remained suspended a couple of feet above the table.

"Can you see me now?"

"No. That's fantastic," said Mohinder.

Peter dropped the pen and came back into view. "Well, at least it's working. God, that's exhausting."

He looked over at Nathan, Claire, and Matt.

They were gathered around the table in Isaac's loft, sifting through piles of notes, press releases, newspaper clippings, photographs, and police reports.

Peter and Matt had used the LAPD computers to print out everyone's criminal records. Nathan had pulled a few strings to obtain the legal briefings on Kate Austen's court trial, as well as the exact details of the settlement between Oceanic Airlines and the five adult survivors of the crash.

All of the other information had been gathered by Claire and Mohinder, fueled by endless cups of coffee as they sat hunched in front of their laptops.

In one corner there was a portfolio full of the drawings that Peter had completed in the past week, which they'd combed for possible leads and helpful hints.

He and Mohinder spent their spare moments practicing doubling up on powers. They'd tried using teleportation, invisibility, healing, phasing, and electricity in various combinations, making sure that Claire wasn't nearby so that he wasn't absorbing her power without knowing it.

All things considered, he was improving quickly enough that they could be optimistic about getting to the Island later; the next step was convincing the Oceanic Six to go back there.

Mohinder had suggested going to see Jack Shephard first, but Peter had opposed that idea.

"Why not? You know him, it's a good place to start," said Mohinder.

"I think he needs some time," said Peter. "The accident on the bridge was yesterday, we should wait a while. It says here that he ended up in the hospital."

He glanced through the newspaper report again. From what he remembered of Dr. Shephard, Peter hadn't been surprised by the story--he hoped Jack was all right.

Matt was watching the news footage of Kate Austen's trial. "This is unbelievable," he said. "Murder one, assault on a federal officer, assault with a deadly weapon, fraud, arson, grand larceny, grand theft auto, you name it, she's done it. And she got off, too."

Nathan had finished reading through Kate's file. "She's a young and beautiful mother who survived a horrific plane crash. Any halfway competent defense team could have got her off as long as prosecution didn't have an unassailable witness on the stand," he said. "So what do we do? Just call her up?"

Peter smiled to himself. He wished that he could show the Nathan of a year ago the man he would be now--he could just imagine the look on his face. Of course, if he practised enough with Hiro's power he could do it, but it would probably have some pretty terrible consequences.

"What so funny?" He looked up to see Nathan staring at him.

"Nothing," he said. "It's just nice, you know. That we're all working together now." Peter looked over at Claire, who grinned back.

"Yeah, yeah, okay," said Nathan. He threw the file on the table. "Do we call Austen, or not?"

"All we have are facts," said Mohinder, leaning forward to look at Kate's picture. "We don't know anything about most of these people _as_ people, yet. I think we should call her, if only to test the waters."

"At least she can't run," said Matt. "It's part of her sentence: she has to stay in the state."

"All right, then. Let's call."

* * *

_**August 2002**_

_**Las Vegas, Nevada**_

When Kate first met Niki Sanders, she wasn't Kate: she was Alice Dodgson.

She'd gotten a job working as a dealer in Vegas, which she had figured would last her for at least four months. The cops in the casino were so busy searching for criminals among the people playing that they didn't look too carefully at the employees. She was quick with her hands and easy on the eyes, and she could play most of the poor suckers sitting in front of her for all they had. In short, she was perfect for the job.

She had noticed the blonde working at the table next to her. The others called her Niki. At first glance, she seemed beautiful, cool and calm and self-possessed.

But Kate knew the little giveaway signs, the dark circles under her eyes, the slight tremor of her hands as they dealt the cards, the weary slump of her shoulders during their breaks. She knew Niki was bone tired and very close to breaking point.

Sometimes Kate wanted to go up to her and talk: she thought that they might have a lot in common, even if it was only the feeling that what they both wanted more than anything else in the world right now was a good long rest, to go to sleep without any worries and not wake up for a long, long time. But she held herself back. Forming ties to anyone right now would be suicide.

Kate had thought that the job would last her for four months. But one day a customer gave her a look when she dealt him his cards, and she knew that it was time to go. She could have been reading too much into the expression in his eyes, the quirk of his lips.

Then again, paranoia had saved her ass before. She had to resist the urge to run for it right then and there.

As she left work that night she bumped into Niki, who was just about to begin her shift. Both their purses went flying, scattering their contents everywhere.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Niki helped Kate to pick up her things. "I'm so clumsy today, I swear, I don't know why."

"It's okay. Oh no, I think your mirror's broken." A small pocket mirror from Niki's purse had splintered into fragments, and as the two women leaned over it they saw their reflections looking back at them, split and multiplied a dozen times by the glass shards. They picked up the pieces without speaking, hands working in unison.

When Niki had left, Kate went straight to the bathroom, entered a stall, and shut the door.

She took off the brown wig she was wearing to reveal her own hair, which she'd dyed blonde that afternoon. She pulled out Niki's wallet from her pocket and found the driver's license.

_Nicole Sanders._ Great. Niki's shift lasted at least five hours--it would get her to the next toll booth.

Within five minutes Kate had pulled out of the employee parking lot and was headed for the highway. They said a broken mirror was bad luck, but then again, it hadn't been her mirror.

* * *

_**October 2006**_

_**Las Vegas, Nevada**_

When Kate saw Niki again, she was in Nevada hunting for Sawyer's daughter.

_"I've got a daughter out there. Could you find her? Tell her I'm sorry."_

More than four months after she started searching, she'd found nothing but dead ends and false trails.

Kate had gotten beyond the point of cursing the romantic streak that had led Sawyer to leave such a cryptic message before kissing her and jumping out of the helicopter, and had moved on to weary resignation. If he'd spent less time on the kiss he might have been able to give her more clues. Not that she hadn't enjoyed the kiss. But still.

The terms of her sentence had forced Kate to remain in California, but she soon found that if you had enough money, you didn't have to go anywhere: you could hire people to do your legwork. Texas, Maine, Florida, South Carolina--she'd employed private detectives all over the country.

But even so, she hadn't gotten far. A con man didn't exactly leave a paper trail that outlined his whereabouts through the years. And given his particular routine, going through the list of all the women Sawyer might have impregnated was going to take a while.

The latest lead had turned up in Nevada, which meant that Kate could follow it up herself. She'd had to lie to Jack about where she was going, which was nothing new: she couldn't remember the last time she'd been in an honest relationship.

She knew that she didn't have to lie. It was just that she couldn't give all of herself to anybody, hadn't ever been able to give all of herself. Not since she had told her mother what she'd done to Wayne, had told her with a child's complete trust and faith, and her mother had betrayed her. Ever since then, secrets had been an insurance policy: a way out for when something went wrong, a way of keeping herself from getting hurt.

After making some initial inquiries on her first trip she'd located the school where she thought Sawyer's daughter might be, and she waited at the front steps, watching the children arriving. Most of them came on the school bus, but some came with their mothers, holding their hands, faces bright and eager.

Kate started as she noticed Niki walking towards her with a boy, and stepped back into the shadows so she wouldn't be recognized.

"Have a great day at school, sweetie."

"Okay, mom," said the boy. "Are you okay? Will you be okay without me?"

"Of course." Niki stooped down to the boy's eye level and hugged him tightly. "Go knock 'em dead, kiddo."

Kate realized that she had tears in her eyes, and she wasn't even sure why. Niki had seemed to sure, so certain of her motherhood, of her love for her son. And she wanted to give that to Aaron. She just didn't know if she could.

She wasn't Aaron's biological mother. She tried to tell herself that it didn't matter.

Wayne hadn't been her dad: any relationship between them was an accident of DNA. Sam Austen was her dad, her real dad, the guy who'd been there for her birthdays and taken her out hunting and shown her how to track and shoot. She could be Aaron's mother.

And she had to be, because she couldn't let Aaron go through what she'd gone through. Her mother had chosen a man over her, and the pain of that betrayal still hadn't gone away. She wasn't going to let that happen to Aaron.

So she'd walked away from Jack, and if he hadn't changed his mind that would have been it. She sometimes wondered why he'd changed his mind. Of course, it might have been the obvious reason. Then again, it might not.

Kate came out of her reverie and realized that all the kids had gone inside. She walked up the steps and found her way to the principal's office, hoping that she'd gotten it right this time.

* * *

_**September 2007**_

_**Los Angeles, California**_

By the time Kate got home that night she was completely exhausted, but when she saw the empty bottles on the table she knew her work wasn't done.

"Hey."

"Hey. You're home early."

Right then, Kate knew that she couldn't do it anymore. She could feel her control slipping, the emotion creeping into her voice and betraying itself in her face. She'd never had any problems getting other people to swallow her lies.

She'd married Kevin, pulled off a bank robbery with Jason, and worked with Ray Mullen for months without them suspecting a thing. She knew just the right way to distract someone's attention at the psychological moment, the way to make them look in the right place at the right time, when to use a smaller lie to throw them off the scent of a bigger one.

She could keep lying to Jack now, if she wanted. She could pretend that she didn't have anything to hide. But she realized that she didn't want to.

She'd tried, in their first days on the Island, telling him exactly what she'd done to end up in those handcuffs. Back then, he hadn't needed to know. And she'd gone back to her old habits.

Now she was tired of it. She was tired of lying. She couldn't tell him about Sawyer's daughter--Sawyer wouldn't have wanted that. But there were other ways of being honest, and she thought she was finally ready to take that chance.

"Jack," she said, "I'm going to ask you to trust me."

* * *

_**December 2nd, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft**_

Peter held his hand over the mouthpiece. "It's ringing," he said. "Hello? Is this Kate Austen?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"My name is Peter Petrelli. I know this is unexpected, but I'm calling because I'm a nurse, and one of my patients used to know you. His name was Jeremy Bentham. Well, actually, you knew him as John Locke."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, then:

"Who are you? Why are you calling? Why do you keep calling me?"

"No, this is the first time we've called--have you been getting strange messages? Please, we just want to help--"

"Stop it! Leave us alone! Don't call me again!"

There was a crash on the other end of the line, and Peter was left staring at the phone in his hand.

Nathan sighed. "That went well."


	10. Do Not Pass Go Do Not Collect 200

**Do Not Pass Go (Do Not Collect 200)**

_**December 2nd, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft, Lower Manhattan**_

All things considered, Matt thought that they weren't getting off to a particularly good start.

Kate Austen's criminal record had worried him, but he hadn't been expecting her to just hang up on them. It looked like this was going to take more than just a few short phone calls.

"I guess we can scratch Austen off the list," said Nathan. He sighed in frustration. "Great."

Peter put a comforting hand on his brother's shoulder. "We just have to keep trying, that's all," he said. He turned to Mohinder, who had the notes on the Oceanic Six. "Maybe we should try somebody else first. Who's next?"

"Sun-Hwa Kwon." Mohinder read the name aloud. "Born Sun-Hwa Paik, daughter of Joon-Ho Paik, CEO of Paik industries. She now owns a controlling interest in the company."

He stopped, looking puzzled. "I thought that Korean women kept their maiden names."

"Maybe she wanted to take her husband's name," said Peter. "His family was a lot poorer than hers. Maybe her parents didn't approve of their marriage."

He propped his chin on his hand and stared into the distance. "Maybe she did it to prove to them that she loved him anyway, no matter what they said."

"Very touching, Peter." Nathan rolled his eyes. "But that doesn't help us much."

"Of course it does," Peter insisted. "We have to know who these people are, what they're like, who they love, who they care about. It's important."

"If you say so." Nathan's tone was non-committal, but Matt saw him bend over his notes to hide a smile.

"I think we should go to see her later," said Peter. "You know, when this says we should." He held up two of his most recent drawings.

"If we go too soon, she might look at them before the fifth, and that would ruin everything."

"It still feels weird, having paintings telling us to do stuff," said Claire, pouring fresh cups of coffee for everyone. "So, anyone else we can call?"

Peter leaned over Mohinder's shoulder, and read out the next name. "Hugo Reyes. John called him Hurley. Matt, you said he was in a mental institution, right? Did you know him?"

Matt shrugged. He doubted that Reyes would even remember who he was. "We weren't golfing buddies or anything. Our precinct brought him in a couple of times. It's not exactly going to make him like us any better."

"But at least he'll know your face," said Peter, brightening up. "He'll know you're a cop, not just some random guy with no background and no credentials."

"I agree," said Claire, pulling up a chair next to Peter. "Maybe we should go see him, instead of calling."

Peter nodded. "Sounds like a good idea."

"I don't know," said Nathan, shaking his head. "This guy is in a loony bin, Pete. He was institutionalized before he even got on that plane. And from what we've read, he _asked_ to be put back in there. Do you really think he'll listen to us?"

"Peter, I believe your brother has a point," said Mohinder. "Matt, at least you've met him, albeit briefly and under less than optimal circumstances. Do you think this will work?"

Matt considered this, remembering the times that he'd seen Hugo Reyes. "Yeah," he said. "I think it will. At least, it might."

* * *

_**March 23rd, 2002**_

_**Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack**_

"Mom, I want a Mr. Cluck's Cluck Toy! Can I get it? Please? Puh-leeeze?"

Matt sighed as the line inched forwards. The saddest part of all this was that buying a Clucky Meal for his partner and four other cops waiting outside was likely to be the highlight of his day.

He pulled out the list that Tom and the others had written for him, pretending to read it. He hoped he got their orders right this time.

"Yo man, what's up."

Matt glanced at the employee behind the counter who was waiting to take his order. The uncharitable side of him was relieved to see that there were guys out there who made him look like George Clooney. Then he felt terrible for thinking it. Then he remembered that he had to place his order.

"Um, yeah. I'll have two Barnyard Bonanzas, two Clucky Meals, one Mega Wing-Fest and one Cock-A-Doodle-Dandy to go, please."

"O-kay. That's 4.08 for the Bonanzas, and with the Clucky Meals that comes to 15.16, and in total we have twenty-three dollars and forty-two cents."

The guy behind the counter froze. "Uh, dude. That is, like, totally weird."

"What's totally weird? Hurley? Hurley?" The cashier at the next counter reached over and poked him.

"What?" Hurley jumped. "No! I didn't do anything! Nothing's the matter. Nothing at all!"

"Excuse me, but could I get my food sometime this week?" Matt wasn't sure what was going on, but he didn't feel like sticking around while the Mr. Cluck's employee had a nervous breakdown.

"Oh yeah. Sorry dude." Hurley rushed to get Matt's order and practically shoved it across the counter. "Here you go."

As Matt turned to leave, he heard Hurley calling after him. "Have a cluckety-cluck-cluck day!"

* * *

_**January 2004**_

_**Los Angeles, California**_

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Reyes. We made a huge mistake." Great. Just what he needed: accidentally arresting a millionaire instead of a drug dealer. His boss had really chewed him out this time.

_"Get your head screwed on straight, Parkman. At least if you're going to handcuff an innocent member of the public, make sure they're not innocent __**and**__ rich, for crying out loud. Now get in there, and grovel. The head of the department's coming along later so we can all do some groveling, but you're first in line."_

"That's okay, dude. It's not your fault." For someone who'd just been manhandled and thrown into jail without doing anything wrong, Hugo Reyes seemed remarkably calm.

"It was my fault, Mr. Reyes, and I would just personally like to apologize for--"

"Dude! I said it's okay! It's not your fault!" Hugo stopped, staring at the case file that lay open on the desk. His mug shot was on the first page. Matt looked at the details written above the photograph. He didn't need to spell them out--he'd seen them a hundred times before, on a hundred different mug shots. He knew exactly what it said.

LAPD CRIMINAL TRACKING SYSTEM  
PHOTOGRAPHIC/BOOKING DATABASE  
Subject file: 00-0408-15-1623-42  
Subject ID: Reyes, Hugo  
Nationality: United States of America

Hurley pointed at the file, his face filled with horror. "Dude, I have to get out of here."

"Of course, Mr. Reyes. The head of the department will be here soon to escort you out himself--"

"No, no! Stay away from me! I'm jinxed! I'm cursed! Go away!" And with that Hugo Reyes ran out of the room, leaving Matt staring after him.

Matt sighed and checked his watch. Two hours until the detective exam started. It was his first try, but he really wanted to get it right, and the stress wasn't going to help. Great. Just great.

* * *

_**April 1st, 2006**_

_**Los Angeles, California**_

"Hey, Matt. Where are you going?"

"I heard that Hugo Reyes had been brought in."

"And what, you were going to interrogate him? A high profile suspect?" Mike laughed. "You haven't even made detective yet, remember?"

Matt bit back an angry retort. To be honest, he hadn't been sure why he'd wanted to see Reyes. It had taken him a while to put two and two together and realize that the guy at Mr. Cluck's had been the same Hugo Reyes that they'd mistakenly arrested a couple of years ago, and by that time Reyes was long gone.

And now he was going nuts in convenience stores and speeding down highways with the police in hot pursuit. He'd read a bit about Reyes, and wondered if his problems had anything to do with his dad leaving when he was a kid. He knew how hard that could be.

He'd just wanted to see the guy. See how he was doing.

"I was just going to look in, that's all."

"Well, don't even think about it. We don't want any fuss. He probably just did it for the attention."

Matt didn't agree with that, but he knew better than to say so. "Hey, you think he met Ana Lucia? On the plane?"

"Doubt it. Weird that they were on the same flight, though."

"Yeah."

When Matt came back from lunch he heard that Reyes had been taken to a mental institution. Just as well, everyone said. He could be a danger to others.

Matt felt unaccountably sad, but shook off the feeling and got back to work. If he wanted to pass the detective exam on his second try he'd have to work at it.

Who knew? He might get lucky this time.

* * *

_**8:16pm, December 2nd, 2007**_

_**Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute, California**_

Matt checked the corridor: it was empty. He went back into the room. "All clear."

"Good. Let's go over it one more time."

"We've got it, Nathan," said Claire, bouncing up and down on her toes. "It's not like it's some big, complicated plan anyway."

Matt looked around at the others.

Nathan was tense, he could tell: he wasn't an easy guy to read, but from their brief time working together Matt could spot the nervousness in his eyes and the set of his shoulders.

Claire looked like she was trying to appear unconcerned, as if she'd done this a thousand times before, but she couldn't hide the excitement in her voice. Peter wasn't even trying--he was as eager as a rookie on his first stakeout.

Matt crossed his fingers and hoped that this would all turn out all right. This place gave him the creeps.

"Shh." Nathan put a finger to his lips. The entire building was so still that the slightest sound echoed through the hallways.

"Okay, Peter. You go first--we don't want him to get spooked by all of us just bursting in. Suresh said he was on the third floor."

Peter stepped out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. He'd only taken a few steps when they heard him jump back.

There was someone else out there with him.

"I'm sorry," said the stranger, speaking in a clipped British accent. "I'm afraid I startled you."

"No problem," said Peter. The door to their room closed as he pulled it shut behind him.

Matt saw Nathan move out of the corner of his eye, and realized that he had to do something quickly: the slightest sound could give them away.

He thought, projecting the command into the others' minds: _Don't say anything. Stay quiet_.

He couldn't be sure that it was working, but none of them spoke.

They heard Peter again. "Hey, aren't you--"

He was cut off by two shots fired in quick succession, audible at close quarters even with the silencer.

Before Matt could do anything, Nathan and Claire had jumped for the door handle. From the looks on their faces, he saw that they were trying to speak, and would have if he hadn't stopped them.

For a split second Matt thought that they were going to run outside, but the door seemed to be jammed shut. Claire eventually gave up and dropped to her knees, trying to look through the keyhole.

She leaped back as the door clicked open and Peter peeked through, holding a finger to his lips.

"Not yet," he whispered. "He might come back down any second, I had to TK the door shut so you wouldn't come out."

He placed a reassuring hand on Nathan's shoulder, and smiled at Claire. "I'm fine. Just have to play dead for a bit longer." With that he shut the door again.

A few minutes later they heard someone coming down the stairs and past the door, then hushed voices, two of them this time. Matt recognized one of them as Hugo Reyes. He held his breath, praying that they wouldn't look too closely at Peter.

"Dude. Did you kill that guy?"

"It was necessary."

"But dude. He's just a kid. He looks pretty harmless."

"There's no time to talk now. We have to go."

They waited until the footsteps had faded away into silence.

The door finally gave way under Nathan's efforts, making him stagger backwards into the room. He ran outside, pulling Peter to his feet and checking him for injuries.

"I'm fine." Peter gave Claire the thumbs up over Nathan's shoulder.

"I'm fine." He actually sounded happy, which Matt thought was taking it a bit far. "Wow. Did you see that? I used telekinesis and healed at the same time! All that training we did paid off!"

He poked at the rapidly disappearing wounds in his chest. "I think I'm healing faster, too. I'm sure bullets used to take longer than this. Of course, Claire's here, so--maybe I still can't do this on my own."

Nathan finally let him go and stood back. Claire ran past him and pulled Peter into a hug.

Matt wondered if he should make Nathan mute again: he looked mad enough to wake the entire building. He felt sorry for the guy who'd shot Peter--the murderous expression on Nathan's face suggested that he'd end up regretting it.

"Would you stop acting like that was fun?" Nathan clapped his hand on Peter's shoulder with such force that his knees almost buckled.

"You may have healed, but you're still covered in blood. And one of these days someone's going to shoot you in the head, and then you'll be--" He shook his head.

"But I'm fine," said Peter. "Don't you think it's amazing that I held that door shut? I was afraid you'd yell out, though."

"Yeah. Um, that was me." Matt shifted on his feet. "I've seen relatives at crime scenes, and I thought you guys might, you know, give us away. Had to think fast."

"Well, it was awesome," said Peter, staring at Matt in admiration. "You'll have to teach me how to do that."

"Nice work, Parkman." Nathan was never particularly generous with his praise, but he sounded impressed.

Matt felt himself turning red, and hoped that it was dark enough so that the others couldn't tell.

Nathan turned back to Peter, frowning. "Listen," he said. "The guy who shot you. Was he--"

"Sayid Jarrah? Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was," said Peter.

"Then this might be harder than we thought."


	11. The Cheshire Cat

**The Cheshire Cat**

_**December 2nd, 2007**_

_**Mohinder Suresh's Apartment, New York**_

"Maybe we started out wrong," said Peter.

"Considering that you got shot, I'd say that's an understatement." Nathan threw himself into a chair, closing his eyes. "Jesus."

Peter sat down next to him, leaning his elbows on the table. "They seemed really scared."

Nathan's eyes snapped open again. "You thought _they_ were scared--oh, for crying out loud, Pete."

Mohinder came over with mugs of hot tea. "I think it might be better to defer any arguments to a later date. We should be thinking about what to do next."

"He's right," said Matt. "And so is Peter--they're scared as hell. I think going in a group was a bad idea. From what we saw, I don't think Reyes would remember me, anyway."

Claire drew her knees up under her, sipping her tea. "So, what--just one of us should go?"

"No," said Nathan. "We don't want to be outnumbered. But Matt has a point--four is too many. I'll go with Peter."

He glanced quickly at Claire, as if expecting her to protest. But she merely nodded.

"Okay," she said. "You're right--it's not a game. This is really important. Besides," she went on, with a wry grin, "I have to learn to pick my battles."

For a second, Nathan stared at her in surprise--then he relaxed, looking relieved. "Right." He stood up. "Listen, it's late, we'd better get some rest. Come on."

* * *

_**December 3rd, 2007**_

_**Somewhere in California**_

Hurley was having a really bad week.

First Mr. Eko had stopped by. That was always depressing. Then Sayid had shown up and killed a guy, before pulling him out of the mental institution. And now he was taking them someplace that he claimed was safe but looked and felt and sounded like a House of Horrors. And not the fun, green Jell-O and candy corn vampire teeth kind, either.

Hurley stepped around something on the floor that looked like it might have had fur, back when it was alive. He wasn't sure what it was, and he really didn't want to know.

Sitting down on the ground, he pressed his back firmly up against the wall. If something came to get him, at least it wouldn't be from behind.

He looked up at Sayid, who was inspecting the walls. He wasn't checking the windows, because there weren't any windows to check. Not a good sign.

"Dude, are you sure this place is safe? It's pretty creepy. And it smells kind of funky, too."

"It's not ideal," said Sayid, sitting next to Hurley. "But it is certainly safer."

At that moment, two men appeared in front of them from thin air.

Sayid was on his feet in less than a second, but the gun flew out of his hand. The next thing they knew, he was pinned up against the wall, unable to move.

Hurley blinked, then stared. He knew all about telekinesis, but he'd never seen it before--not even on the Island. Well, not from a person, anyway.

And besides...wasn't that the guy Sayid had shot back at the asylum? Maybe he was a zombie, just a really healthy looking one. Or maybe he was another Dave.

"Aw, man," he said. "They said the new drugs would help with the hallucinations. They lied."

Now the guy-who-might-be-a-zombie-or-maybe-Dave was talking.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "My name's Peter Petrelli. This is my brother, Nathan. And you're not hallucinating. We want to help you. I know you're scared, but we just want to talk."

"Peter Petrelli?" Hurley wondered if he'd heard right. "Dude, no wonder you have superpowers. That's like the comic book equivalent of a stripper name."

He turned to Sayid to see what he thought. The other man was still suspended against the wall, and spoke with difficulty, trying to catch his breath. "Correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't I shoot you yesterday?"

"Dude, he's using TK," said Hurley. "That's so not the question to be asking right now."

"I guess I should know better than to walk away after shooting someone without making sure that they're dead."

"That was on the Island. We're in the real world now," said Hurley. He considered this for a moment. "At least, I think so. Maybe we brought the freakiness back with us."

"That's why I'm here. We need to talk about the Island," said Peter. He looked back at Sayid. "And, yeah, you did shoot me. I can heal from bullet wounds. And other things."

"Wow." Hurley spoke in an awed whisper. "Are you, like, Wolverine or something?"

"Well, kind of," said Peter. "I'm going to let you down," he said to Sayid. "If I wanted to hurt you, I could have already. So you can trust me. Okay?"

Sayid nodded.

"Okay. Good." Peter released Sayid gently.

Hurley sighed with relief, and took the opportunity to get a better look at the Petrellis. The guy called Nathan hadn't said a word so far--he looked angry, which Hurley figured was understandable considering that Sayid had tried to kill his brother.

They seemed so...ordinary. Then again, maybe these were the personas they maintained to hide their secret identities.

"Huh," said Hurley, when he'd finished looking them over. "You're like, totally normal. I thought you'd be wearing, you know, matching outfits. Something more in the X-Men line. Black leather. Or black dusters. Or capes."

"No capes," said Peter firmly. "It's not our thing."

"Man, this is so not my day," said Hurley. He clutched his head with his hands. "I swear, I'm gonna wake up with a killer headache and realize that they gave me Hairy Al's meds by mistake."

"Pardon me for interrupting," said Sayid, stepping forward. "But may I point out that this exchange, delightful though it is, is not exactly enlightening?"

Nathan finally spoke. "Fine," he said, crossing his arms. "Let's get down to business. It's a long story, but I'll make it as short as I can."

As he listened, Hurley felt his eyes and mouth opening wider and wider. This couldn't be happening. Maybe these people had escaped from the psych ward, too. Maybe there'd been a mass breakout after he'd left.

When Nathan had finished, he stood back, waiting for them to say something.

Hurley let out a huge sigh. "Whoa. Didn't see that coming."

"Why should we trust you?" Sayid sounded more skeptical than ever. "We have been lied to and betrayed more times than you know. Why should we believe your story?"

"I think you already do believe it," said Peter. He tilted his head to one side, watching Sayid closely. "You're just afraid to do anything about it. Or you think you can't."

He went on before Sayid could say anything.

"You've seen what I can do. You know we're telling you the truth about my powers."

_Though I could give you more proof, if you want._

Hurley's mouth dropped open again when he heard Peter's voice inside his head. He peeked at Sayid, and saw that even he looked surprised.

He made a quick mental comparison and decided that this guy was definitely right up there on the Weird-O-Meter with the Smoke Monster, the Hatch, and Jacob.

"You know you have to go back," said Peter. He looked at Nathan. "And we can help you."

"We only want to be left alone," said Sayid.

Nathan shook his head. "That's impossible. Whoever is behind this, whether it's Widmore or someone working with him, has almost unlimited resources and a great deal of power and determination. They're never going to leave you alone until you finish this, once and for all. Running away isn't an option."

"I know who you are," said Sayid. He stared at Nathan as if seeing him for the first time. "You are not the only one who has researched Widmore and his kind, Congressman Petrelli. And your family's reputation does not exactly inspire confidence."

"Ex-Congressman," said Peter. He stepped towards his brother. "And Nathan's not like that. He doesn't work for those kinds of people."

"But regrettably, I do," said Sayid. He turned back to Nathan. "I don't know how much you have learned, but before we proceed any further, you should know that I am working with Benjamin Linus."

"John talked about him," said Peter. "Why are you doing this? Is it because of how Nadia--"

"Don't say her name." For the first time, Sayid's voice shook a little.

"It's okay," said Nathan. He spoke so quietly that Hurley had to make an effort to hear what he was saying. "I can understand why you're working for Ben Linus. Even if you hate him. But you can't keep on doing it forever."

Sayid's fists were clenched by his sides. "And why not?" he asked. "I have nothing left to lose."

"Yes, you do," said Nathan. "You still have a soul. You still love her. And if you keep doing this, it'll destroy whatever you have inside that lets you love her. You'll lose that too."

"Guys, can everyone just chill for a second?!" Hurley was starting to panic. "'Cause I'm still not going."

Peter looked dismayed. "But Hurley--"

"Look man, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not exactly in the mood for island hopping right now?"

He went on, twisting his hands together.

"And, like, I get that you have a mission and all, and we made a lot of mistakes, and it's nice that you want to fix that, but sometimes, you've just gotta say, 'Enough! It's too late!' And I've had enough, okay? I like things the way they are now. At least things don't change anymore. I wanna go back to the mental institution."

Hurley looked at Sayid.

"Can't you take me back? I don't care if it's dangerous. I just wanna get up in the same bed, in the same room, and take my shower in the same cubicle, and eat the same food in the same chair at the same table every day. I like it that way, okay?"

He was rapidly becoming hysterical. "I liked things the way they were, so would you all just leave me alone!"

"No, you didn't like things the way they were," said Peter.

He knelt down next to Hurley on the floor.

"You say you don't want things to change. But you're not happy now, are you? And neither are your friends. Charlie, Boone, Eko...None of you are happy."

Hurley looked up. "You talked to Charlie? He was one of the guys who came to see you?"

Peter nodded. "Yeah."

"I've seen him, too," said Hurley. "They won't go away. I kept hoping that it was all in my head, or something, but..."

He picked nervously at the nubbly surface of his bathrobe. "I told Jack we had to go back, a while ago. But now...I'm scared."

"Why?"

"Because it was my fault!" Hurley was on the verge of tears.

"The plane crash, everything, Charlie dying, all of it! Ever since I won the frickin' lotto with those frickin' numbers and I got cursed! No, even before that! Those people on the dock, they died because of me. If I hadn't been so..."

Hurley choked back his sobs. "So heavy, it wouldn't have collapsed. And if I hadn't gone with Locke, Claire wouldn't have come with me and she would have been safe and Aaron would still have his mom. And then, when we were coming back, if it hadn't been for me, Sawyer wouldn't have had to jump off that chopper. He could have come with us. I'm just dead weight."

He looked up again, staring defiantly at Peter. "If you wanna go, then go. But don't take me. Bad things happen to people around me, man. I'm jinxed. You don't want me around."

"What kinds of bad things?"

"Like, my brother's wife left him for another woman, and my grandpa Tito died, and the priest at his funeral got struck by lightning, and this guy, just, threw himself out of a window outside my accountant's office. And my girlfriend, Starla, she ran off with my best friend, Johnny, and the place where I used to work, Mr. Cluck's, got struck by a meteor, and Tricia Tanaka died! And, dude, would you mind not making me relive all this stuff? It was bad enough the first time."

Hurley glanced at Peter. This was usually the point where people either patted him on the head and told him it was all in his imagination, or started backing away with a nervous smile on their faces.

But Peter just gazed at him, a concerned look in his eyes.

"Dude, I don't know what else to tell you--"

"I'm sorry. That's not why I was...You say you're cursed."

"Yeah. And don't try to convince me that I'm not! Because I swear, if one more person tells me I'm making this up--"

"I don't think you're making it up," said Peter. He gave Hurley a small smile. "But Charlie and Boone and Eko are coming to see you for a reason, right? They want you to go back."

"Yeah, but dude, I just told you, I'm bad news. I'm a walking disaster area."

"So am I."

"What? Didn't you hear what I just--"

"I heard. And I know what you're going through."

Hurley raised his eyebrows. "Uh, yeah, somehow I doubt that."

"You won the lottery," said Peter. "I thought I did, too, only it was a different kind of jackpot. I got these powers. It was the greatest feeling in the world, right? Like you could go anywhere, do anything. You could be someone. Make a difference."

"I bought my mom a new house. And tried to send my grandpa Tito on vacation. But--"

Peter nodded.

"Then things started to go wrong. I started to hurt people. My family, my friends. People I barely even knew. Sometimes they died, sometimes they got hurt, sometimes..."

Peter looked away for a second, and took a deep breath before turning back to Hurley.

"Sometimes it was worse than that. At some point, it feels like you'd be better off dead than alive. Because you can't control it. You can't control what's happening to you. So I tried to lock myself away. Just like you. I stayed in a prison for four months. Taking my meds every day. And I was fine with that. I would have been fine with them keeping me in there forever."

Hurley took another look at Peter. Maybe he did understand.

"I broke out," said Peter, "Later, to help my brother, but things just got worse. So I stopped using my powers. Or at least, I tried. But then I started having these dreams again."

"With our friends?"

"Yeah. That's when I realized--it's part of me, Hurley," said Peter. He put a hand on Hurley's shoulder. "I couldn't make it go away, even if I wanted to. And I've screwed up. A lot. But I've also been learning how to use my powers. We can use them to help people, to help you. And I think I did the right thing. I couldn't hide from my problems forever. Haven't you ever felt that, too?"

Hurley suddenly remembered his foot jamming down on the accelerator, Charlie clutching the seat next to him, Sawyer's and Jin's shouts barely audible over the wind rushing past his ears as the Dharma Initiative van trundled down the hill, speeding towards the rocks, faster and faster and faster...

_We make our own luck._

Hurley began to feel something like hope.

"You think you've come home. But Hurley, you're still trapped on that Island," said Peter. "Don't you want to be free?"

Hurley looked around the room. Everyone was watching him, waiting for him to say something.

"Aw, crap," he said. "We're going back to the friggin' Island, aren't we?"

"We will think about it," said Sayid. "We'll be in touch."


	12. SonTaek Choices

**Son-Taek (Choices)**

_**December 4th, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft, Lower Manhattan**_

Claire glared at the phone, willing it to ring. Surely they'd managed to convince Sayid and Hurley last night--shouldn't they have called by now? Mohinder said that they just had to wait and be patient, but she was finding it hard.

"Right, it's the fifth tomorrow," said Nathan. He got up, stretching his arms over his head. "Time to go and see Kwon. I think we should call Hiro Nakamura."

Matt looked up in surprise. "Nakamura? Why? We haven't see him since that time in Texas."

"Because Yamagato and Paik Industries have a business connection that goes back for decades. I remember Ma and Pa talking about it," said Nathan.

Claire turned away from the phone and looked at Nathan curiously. "Did your parents know these people, too? The Paiks? Were they in the Company?"

"I don't think so," said Nathan. "But then again, who knows."

Claire shook her head. "Your family is so weird."

"It's your family too, you know," said Peter. Claire caught his eye and grinned.

"Like I was saying," Nathan went on, "Kaito Nakamura and Joon-Ho Paik made a lot of deals together. Hated each other's guts, but that's pretty much par for the course. Now that Hiro's sister's taken over management of their father's company, she and Kwon probably know each other. It'll give us a more credibility if Hiro comes along. Might make us more successful than we were with Austen."

"That's an excellent idea. I'll call him right now," said Mohinder. He walked over to the phone. "And Peter, are you taking--"

"Yeah," said Peter, holding up two sketches. "I'm taking these, too."

"Hello?" Mohinder spoke into the receiver.

"Hiro, is that you? This is Mohinder Suresh speaking. Yes. Yes, we're fine. We're all fine. I know this is short notice, but we were wondering if you could help us with something. Oh good, good. Thank you. Yes, we were just wondering. Do you know Sun-Hwa Kwon? She's currently running Paik Industries."

* * *

_**April 1988**_

_**Seoul, South Korea**_

"Sun-Hwa-yah, why don't you play with the other children outside before it's time to eat?" It was phrased as a question, but Sun knew when her mother had to be obeyed.

She walked out into the garden, where a small boy of about her age was standing with his older sister.

She knew that the boy's father was an important businessman who had been invited to dinner, and that everyone in the house was trembling in fear of what would happen if something went wrong that day.

The servants had been told that anyone who made a mistake would be sent packing without a reference, and everyone moved about the house on tip-toe, making sure that the flowers were perfectly arranged, the furniture brightly polished, and not a single ornament out of place. The kitchen was in complete chaos as the cook sweated to produce a nine course dinner for the guests.

The children contemplated each other in silence. The boy wore grey flannel shorts with suspenders over a white shirt, and glasses that kept slipping down his nose. He would push them up every few seconds with one finger. The girl wore a pale blue dress with red tulips on the collar. Her hair was done up in plaits.

The boy stepped forward, smiling.

"_Boku wa Hiro. Nakamura Hiro,_" he said, putting a hand on his chest. He stepped back, and waited expectantly.

Sun realized that she was supposed to introduce herself, and decided to have a go. "Boku wa Sun-Hwa. Paik Sun-Hwa," she said.

Hiro shook his head. He pointed to himself, then said, "_Boku._"

He then began to point to his sister, then changed his mind and picked up her hand, ignoring her protests, and made her point to herself.

"_Watashi,_" he said.

He stood like a soldier, waving an imaginary sword. "_Boku._" He then dropped a curtsey, and bunched his hair into tiny pigtails. "_Watashi._"

Sun realized what he meant. Trying not to giggle, she said, "_Watashi wa Sun-Hwa._"

Hiro nodded, beaming. His sister rolled her eyes. When she didn't introduce herself, he poked her in the arm. She sighed, putting her hands on her hips, and said, "_Watashi wa Kimiko._"

Sun soon found that she was enjoying herself more than she'd expected to. She had heard bad things about Japanese people; her mother despised them, her father hated doing business with them (though to be fair, he hated doing business with a lot of people), and her grandparents still talked about the years when Korea had been a Japanese colony, and the Japanese army a hated presence in their country.

But Hiro seemed friendly, and after the initial introductions even Kimiko was running around with them shouting and laughing like any of the other children at Sun's school.

It was Sun who ran inside first, forgetting her mother's instructions to play in the garden. She realized what would happen a split second after it was too late to do anything about it--her foot slammed against a tall cabinet, making it rock precariously.

She held her breath, hoping that nothing would fall, and for a second she thought she was safe. Then, on the highest shelf, a small china vase swayed back and forth, back and forth, before falling to the floor and smashing into a thousand tiny pieces.

Sun stood staring at the fragments, unable to speak. Hiro, who had run in after her, looked at her in dismay.

"_Ara,_" he said. Sun didn't need a translator to know what, "Oh no," was in Japanese.

"Sun-Hwa-yah! What are you doing?"

Sun whirled around to see her mother and father in the doorway. There was no question of blaming this on a servant. She'd been caught in the act. Unless...

Sun thought fast. Hiro and Kimiko couldn't understand Korean. And his father was a guest in their home, which meant that the Nakamuras could not be criticized or insulted in any way during their stay. Hiro was immune. And he was such a nice boy: he'd never suspect what she'd done.

"Hiro broke the vase." Sun spoke with the assurance and confidence born of long practice. "We were playing, and he ran inside, and his foot hit the cabinet and made the vase fall over."

"Sun-Hwa-yah. Do you swear to me that you are telling the truth?" Her father came up to her, and she held his gaze without flinching.

Hiro's father came into the room, and Sun had a moment of panic. If Hiro or Kimiko gave her away, she was lost. But just as they were her guests, she was their host: and she was sure that Mr. Nakamura would never insult a host's daughter.

Sun stared down at her shoes and prayed. When she heard Hiro's voice, however, her head snapped back up.

"_Boku no sei desu._"

Hiro was pointing to himself. Sun couldn't catch the rest of his words, but the entire story was written in Hiro's bent head and downcast expression, and his father's stern tone as he chastised his son. Mr. Nakamura turned to her father.

"I must apologize for the clumsiness of my son," he said, bowing.

His Korean was terrible but Sun could understand what he was saying. "It is my fault for being a neglectful and careless parent, and not educating him properly. I beg that you will allow me to replace the vase."

Soon their parents were entangled in apologies, each proclaiming their own unworthiness. Sun saw Kimiko walk up to her brother, clearly demanding to know why he had done such a stupid thing. Hiro only shrugged.

As they walked out of the door to go and eat dinner, he pushed his glasses up his nose one more time before giving Sun a huge wink.

* * *

_**March 2007**_

_**Tokyo, Japan**_

Sun had forgotten all about Hiro and Kimiko when she learned of Kaito Nakamura's death. When they heard that it was his daughter who would become the next CEO of Yamagato, instead of his son, most of her father's colleagues and business associates were surprised. Sun was not.

The next time she came face to face with Kimiko Nakamura they met as equals. Sun was impressed by Kimiko's cool head, her grasp of the markets, her business acumen. And in Kimiko's face she could see the same satisfaction that Sun herself felt in exercising her newfound power--in the realization that she could fill her father's shoes, and do it well.

When their meeting was over and the others had left the room, Sun walked up to Kimiko, holding a small box. She had been relieved to find that the other woman spoke English--it would make this a lot easier.

"Nakamura Kimiko-san." For the first time that day, Sun was nervous. "I don't know if you remember the day we had dinner together, as children. I wanted to give you this."

"Of course I remember." Kimiko took the box. "Should I open it?"

"Oh yes, please."

Kimiko opened the box to reveal a small vase, identical to the one Sun had broken so many years ago. Tears sprang into her eyes.

"Oh, Hiro," she said. "Our father scolded him so about that vase. But he knew that Hiro did not break it. I heard him speaking about it to our mother when we returned home. He sounded so proud."

Sun could hear the grief in Kimiko's voice as she recalled her father. But she did not pity the other woman: she envied her. She envied her for loving her father, for being able to regret that he was dead.

"I am so sorry that I lied that day. I was afraid. I did not know that Hiro would take the blame for me."

"That is the way he is." Kimiko and Sun smiled at each other.

"Tell him that I remember him, and that I am still grateful. And that I was greatly saddened to hear of your father's death."

"I will."

* * *

_**July 2006**_

_**Seoul, South Korea**_

"So, is this like, a real serious rite of passage thing?" Hurley bent over Ji Yeon, making funny faces and amusing her with hand puppets.

"'Cause what happens if, like, the baby picks up a chopstick? Does the fortune-teller guy say, 'Baby, dude, dudette, you're clearly meant for the restaurant business. Go forth, and create the next Taco Bell!' I mean, what if the kid wants to be, I dunno, a musician? Or a used car salesman?"

"Hurley!" Sun laughed as she picked up Ji Yeon. "It is not that serious. It's mostly for fun. And to please my mother."

She tickled her daughter. "I certainly don't think that Ji Yeon's future is going to be fixed after one silly experiment."

"Oh, good. 'Cause, I don't really believe in fortune tellers. I mean, I went once, but that was for my dad. And she turned out to be, kind of...erm...a fake. Anyhoo," said Hurley, his expression brightening, "I'm sure that won't happen to little Ji Yeon here. So when's it gonna be?"

"Most people do it on the baby's first birthday, but I want to wait until she's older. She might be scared if she's too little. Maybe next year. Do you want to come?" Sun asked. "I'm sure Ji Yeon would like it."

"Uh, I don't think that's such a good idea." Hurley stood up, twiddling his fingers. "I mean, I'd love to come, you know. But, yeah. Probably not such a good idea. I want this to work out good for your baby. Future-wise."

"I thought you didn't believe in fortune tellers."

"I don't. I believe in curses."

"Hurley!"

"Look, man, I just don't want anything raining on Miss Sun-shine's parade. Besides, it's a family thing." Hurley smiled. "Hey, wanna go for some Korean barbecue?"

* * *

_**December 5th, 2007**_

_**Seoul, South Korea**_

Peter and Hiro stood outside Sun's apartment building, waiting for her to come out.

"What's she like?" Peter had read a lot about Sun-Hwa Kwon, but he still couldn't get a good sense of who she was as a person. She must have had a terrible time, coming back on her own after the crash. He wondered how she would react when he told her what they intended to do.

"I met her...a long time ago. But I know...she is very pretty. Very smart. Very..." Hiro struggled to find the right words. "Very strong."

Peter nodded, then went back to watching the door.

"I hope this works," said Hiro. "Peter, do you think it is good to show her these pictures?"

"Good?" Peter turned back to him, confused. "Of course it's good. Hiro, this is the best chance we have of convincing her to come with us."

"Yes, but." Hiro looked worried. "These pictures. Can be sad. Can be scary."

"Oh." Peter's puzzlement changed to understanding. "That's kind of the whole point, you know? It'll make her believe us. I think it's worth it, if it convinces her to come."

"I see," said Hiro. He raised a finger and quoted, "With great power comes great responsibility, Peter."

"Thanks, Uncle Hiro," said Peter, smiling. Nathan tended to scoff when he and Hiro talked about their favorite comics, but that had never dampened their enthusiasm. Hiro had some real collectors' items--though he still said that none of them measured up to the original _Ninth Wonders_.

Peter put his hand in his coat pocket, checking that the envelope he'd brought was still there. "It's amazing, though--knowing that first painting would come true today. Lucky for us."

"Not luck." Hiro leaned closer and whispered, "Destiny."

Peter laughed, then stopped, grasping Hiro's arm. "There she is."

Sun had come out of the building, holding her daughter. She turned as they walked up to her.

"Kwon Sun-Hwa-shi." Hiro bowed. Peter hurriedly imitated him, his hair falling into his eyes as he bent forwards.

Sun smiled. "Hiro." She paused, then said, "Do you speak English?"

She addressed Peter. "Maybe you could translate?"

"No, no, I speak," said Hiro, his command over grammar slipping in his excitement. He clapped his hands in delight. "We both speak! That's great!"

Sun laughed. "Yes, we can understand each other at last," she said. "I met your sister recently, to work on a deal. She is an excellent CEO."

"Oh yes," said Hiro. "Much better than me."

He looked at the baby. "Is this your daughter?"

"Yes," said Sun, showing her to Peter and Hiro. "This is Ji Yeon."

Peter looked at Hiro, then Sun, wondering if he should say something. Sun caught his eye and asked, "Is anything wrong? Why have you come to see me?"

Hiro gestured to Peter. "This is my friend, Peter Petrelli."

"Petrelli?" There was recognition in Sun's voice.

"Not a bad Petrelli," Hiro said, holding up his hands in protest. "He is not in the family business."

Peter bit his lip, trying not to smile.

"I understand," said Sun. "I do not judge people's characters by those of their parents. That would be foolish."

Peter decided that it was time he intervened.

"Mrs. Kwon, I'm sorry that we burst in on you like this, without any warning. But we didn't have much time, and we weren't sure how to introduce ourselves. A lot of what we're going to tell you will sound strange, and you may not believe us. I just want you to hear us out."

Sun nodded for him to go on.

"Okay then. I guess I'd better start at the beginning."

When Peter had finished telling her about his dreams, and about his talk with John Locke, he said, "John said that you all have to go back before it's too late. We think we know how to get you back to the Island, and that it's our job to get you there."

"I've heard enough," said Sun. "I want nothing more to do with the Island. That part of my life is over."

"Wait, please," said Hiro. "We know this is hard. But you might be making a big mistake."

"I think that that is for me to judge," said Sun. She turned to go.

"We thought that you might be angry," said Peter. "We know that this sounds crazy. But this might convince you."

He drew out the envelope from his coat pocket.

"I told you about my abilities. Well, one of them lets me paint the future. I can draw things that will happen. And one of the two drawings in here shows something that will happen today. Our phone number is in there, too. I know it's not absolute proof. But it's the best that we can do. Please, just think about it. And call us if you change your mind."

* * *

_**December 5th, 2007**_

_**Sun-Hwa Kwon's Apartment, Seoul, South Korea**_

Later that night, Sun got out of bed and switched on the light. She had been tossing and turning for two hours. The envelope that she'd intended to throw away lay on her dresser, unopened.

Sun walked over to the crib and looked down at her sleeping daughter. Ji Yeon was so beautiful--so full of laughter and life. Jin would have loved her so much, would have cared for her so tenderly, would have showered gifts on her, rushed home from work every day to be with them both.

Sun clenched her hands, her nails digging into her palms. She'd sworn to herself that she wouldn't let these thoughts enter her mind, that she wouldn't let herself think of what life would be like now if Jin had survived.

She'd built up a dam in her mind, a wall strengthened by the hate and resentment and anger she felt towards everyone she held responsible for her husband's death: including herself. She couldn't let the slightest crack appear in its surface, or the floodgates would burst open and she would lose any control she had left. And she had to stay in control. For Ji Yeon.

And now these people had appeared out of nowhere and told her that she must go back to the Island.

As Sun looked down at Ji Yeon, the baby opened her eyes. She stared around, ready to cry, then smiled as she saw her mother. Sun smiled back.

"Ji Yeon-ah. My sweet baby. My clever girl. Are you glad to see me?" She stroked Ji Yeon's cheek with one finger, and the baby closed her eyes again, sinking into sleep.

Sun stood there for a minute, recalling what had happened at the fortune teller's that day. She had been surprised by Ji Yeon's choices, but of course, she was only two years old. She'd reached for the things she wanted to play with just then.

Peter Petrelli had said that one of the drawings would show something that happened today. Ridiculous, of course. And yet.

Sun walked over to the envelope and ripped it open, pulling out the two sheets of paper inside. As she looked at the first one, her hands began to shake.

It was a watercolor sketch, showing her and Ji Yeon at the fortune teller's. A calendar on the back wall showed today's date.

She was holding her daughter, smiling. In one hand, Ji Yeon held a dried starfish, glowing like an orange star. In the other, she held a knife.

Sun sat down, trembling, remembering what the fortune teller had said.

"I see that your child has a strong will. A knife is an unusual choice for a girl."

He had paused, looking at Ji Yeon. "She will have a unique destiny. And a starfish...she is going on a journey across the ocean, to a land far away, and yet close to her."

_It could still be a coincidence,_ Sun thought to herself. _Just luck. Or maybe they bribed the fortune teller._

But how could they have made Ji Yeon choose those objects? She had heard of conjuring tricks where such things were done, but surely they would not work on a baby.

She still hadn't seen the second picture. Taking a deep breath, Sun uncovered it. And stared.

It showed a man and a woman, standing on a beach. The man was holding a baby.

It was her and Jin.

Sun wondered if she'd gone insane. It was impossible. Somebody had been playing a trick on her, a cruel joke, and when she got hold of them she'd make them regret ever thinking of it.

She looked more closely at the picture, and saw that they had been drawn in front of an irregular object that seemed to be made of stone. Sun peered at it, trying to figure out what it was before she realized: it was a statue of a foot, with only four toes.

Sun sat for a long time, thinking. She and Jin had not mentioned what they had seen to anybody else. But Sayid had seen the statue, too. And she was sure that the Others knew about it.

These pictures were not proof. To be fair, though, Hiro and Peter Petrelli had said as much themselves. And remembering what Hiro had been like as a child, she could not believe that he was lying to her.

They had given her hope: or at least, the possibility of hope. And that was more than she had had for a long, long time. She picked up the phone.


	13. Rules of the Game

**Rules of the Game**

_**December 6th, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft, Lower Manhattan**_

"I knew she'd call." Peter sounded triumphant. They'd just finished listening to Sun's message on the answering machine.

"Fine, Peter, you were right," said Nathan. "You can stop rubbing it in."

"We still don't know if we convinced Jarrah and Reyes," said Matt. "I mean, you said they looked pretty spooked when you left them, but that could mean anything. Jarrah could be on his way over with an Uzi to take us all out right now."

"If he is, then Peter can handle him," said Claire.

"Hurley and Sayid will come," said Peter, sitting down next to Nathan. "Hurley wants to help Charlie and Boone and Shannon and Eko. They're his friends. And Sayid's a good man. It's killing him to work for Ben. He'll come with us."

Nathan felt a headache coming on. Peter was already on a first name basis with these people, one of whom was a certified lunatic, another of whom had shot him in the chest only the night before, and half of the rest of whom were ghosts. Every time he thought he couldn't worry any more about his little brother, Peter proved him wrong.

"We are here, but you will be happy to hear that we are unarmed."

They all turned to see Sayid standing in the doorway, with Hurley behind him.

"We're very glad to see you, Mr. Jarrah, Mr. Reyes," said Mohinder, going up to them. "Please, come in."

"Dude, call me Hurley."

Both men walked down the stairs and into the loft. Sayid smiled.

"I have brought Hurley here because we felt that it would be safer," he said. "I have some business of my own to attend to before I can join you, but I was hoping that he could stay with you until I get back."

"Of course," said Peter. He stood up. "We're happy to have you."

Nathan considered taking Peter aside and suggesting that they at least ask some questions before accepting houseguests, but he gave it up as a lost cause. Besides, Jarrah and Reyes seemed like decent people, and Reyes was certainly harmless enough.

Jarrah was another story. But at least it looked like he was willing to cooperate.

Claire had just finished introducing herself to Hurley. "You don't mind staying here, right?" she asked.

He sat down next to her at the table. "Dude, are you kidding? It's like staying at Xavier's Institute. Or the Batcave. I go where the freaky super-powered bodyguard's at, man."

He looked around the room, then stopped when he saw Matt. "Hey, dude...don't I know you?"

"Dude--I mean, er, yes," said Matt. "I was in the LAPD. We...um. We arrested you a couple of times. Sorry about that."

"Hey, no hard feelings," said Hurley. He pointed at a pile of Isaac's work on one of the tables.

"Wow! Is that _Ninth Wonders_?"

"You know it?" Mohinder picked up several copies and handed them to Hurley. "One of our old acquaintances used to draw them."

"No freaking way! You knew Isaac Mendez? I loved these! Why'd he stop?"

The others looked at each other. Nathan cleared his throat.

"He's dead," he said. "He was murdered. About a year ago."

"Oh." Hurley's face fell. "Dude, that sucks."

"Are these paintings also by Mendez?" Sayid put a hand on Peter's shoulder, gently steering him towards the back of the studio. "May I look at them?"

Nathan watched as they started looking at the paintings. He decided not to walk over--Jarrah was probably just impressed by the artwork--but it couldn't hurt to keep an eye on them.

Peter followed Sayid, leaving the others to continue their conversation. He was surprised by the other man's sudden interest in the paintings, but began to pull out some of the canvases anyway.

"Isaac painted these right before he died. Actually, that was his power. He could paint the future."

Peter smiled when he saw the painting of Claire on the stairs. "See, this is one of the first I ever saw. That's Claire."

"Ah, I was wondering if any of you were in the paintings," said Sayid. "You must have read my mind."

As he spoke, he looked straight into Peter's eyes, as if trying to tell him something. Peter stared back for a second, puzzled. Then he realized what Sayid was implying.

Quickly, he thought of Matt.

He remembered Matt interrogating him in the police station, Matt walking towards him in the underground corridor at Primatech, Matt watching cartoons with Molly while Mohinder made scrambled eggs in the kitchen.

Then, suddenly, the telepathic channels opened up and he could hear Sayid's thoughts.

_This room is almost certainly bugged, Peter. This is the only mode of communication that is absolutely safe. But we must carry on talking so that our silence does not appear suspicious. We can cover the pauses in our conversation by pretending to study the paintings._

Sayid turned away, placing several canvases on the easels at the back of the studio. "So, this drawing of Claire. I imagine that it holds some particular significance for you."

"Yeah, it does. I saw this before I even met her."

_Who's listening to us? And why?_

"May I see more of them?"

_Benjamin Linus. Or Charles Widmore. Or both. But Peter, I am here principally to warn you about Benjamin. He is more dangerous than you know._

Peter looked through the paintings, and grabbed the first one that caught his eye. "Sure. Here, this is one of his earliest. It's of the solar eclipse in 2006."

_But we know Widmore is the enemy. Ben's not even involved. He just came to visit John a couple of times._

Sayid nodded, contemplating the painting. "I remember that eclipse. It was an extraordinary event."

_You may believe that everything you have done so far has been your own idea, carried out on your own initiative. But I think that Ben is pulling the strings. And if he is, I assure you that we will end up pursuing his agenda, not ours. If we go, it must be on our own terms, not his or Widmore's._

_The only problem is that we must keep Ben alive. He has essential information about the Island, and he has proved to be useful in the past, when it served his purpose._

Peter tried to keep his voice and expression neutral, and concentrated on the picture. "I remember it, too. It's weird, thinking that a lot of us were seeing the same thing, at the same time, before we even knew each other."

_I'll talk to Nathan about it. He'll know what to do. Thank you._

"Mendez was talented indeed. Do you have any personal favorites among the paintings?"

_You and your friends deserve to know what you are getting into. Later today, you will receive an unmarked envelope in the mail: it will contain all the information I have on Linus--and on the work I have done for him. It should give you some idea of the kind of man he is._

_Peter, I would like to give you one more piece of advice. You must stop being so trusting. Just because Widmore is evil does not necessarily mean that those opposed to him are innocent. You underestimated Linus, and you have accepted our word without question. You should have asked for this evidence before I offered it._

_You cannot continue placing so much faith in the goodness of others. Before I came in, I heard you say that I was a good man._

_You are wrong._

"My favorite is this one," said Peter. He pointed towards the floor.

"Is that New York City?" Sayid stared at the painting. "It appears to be a nuclear explosion."

He turned back to Peter in surprise. "Why is this your favorite?"

"Because it didn't come true," said Peter. "Because it proves that nothing's inevitable."

He and Nathan had avoided talking about that day for a long time--that is, until one night when he and Claire were making ice cream sundaes at midnight down in the kitchen, and Nathan had come in because he couldn't sleep.

They ended up staying awake until 6AM, licking fudge sauce off their fingers and coming up with increasingly insane flavor combinations, talking about anything and everything: starting with Kirby Plaza, then moving on to embarrassing childhood experiences, then Mr. Muggles' latest performance at the All-State Perfect Pooch Parade.

By the time the sun came up, he and Nathan had taught Claire how to play poker, and she'd made them try peanut butter ice cream with rocky road and mint chocolate chip.

They'd eventually fallen asleep in the living room, watching reruns of _The Twilight Zone_.

Nathan had griped that he'd been a walking zombie at work the next day, and that he didn't have time for stupid kid stuff anymore, but Peter noticed that the freezer was always well stocked with ice cream after that.

He came back from his memories to find Sayid waiting for the rest of his explanation.

"I was supposed to be that explosion," said Peter. "I was supposed to overload on powers, go nuclear and blow up New York. My brother was part of the plan. He was going to let it happen. But he didn't. I knew he wouldn't do that to me. I believed in him."

He looked at Sayid. "So you see," he said. "I was right."

Sayid shook his head, then smiled.

He turned and walked back to the others. Peter followed him. "I'm afraid that I will have to leave now if I'm to catch my flight. Have you contacted any of the other survivors?"

"We've just heard from Mrs. Kwon," said Mohinder. "She seems willing to talk, at least."

"You're gonna have a hard time winning her over, dude," said Hurley, looking up from his copy of _Ninth Wonders_. "And I'm sorry, but I can't help you out on this one. I'm not talking to her about the Island."

"We've got it covered," said Nathan. He leafed through the files until he found Kate's. "The problem is Austen. She hasn't answered any of our calls, after the first one."

"I might be able to help there," said Sayid. "I don't think that you are the right people to persuade her."

"Then who is?"

"Someone else on your list. Dr. Jack Shephard."

Peter turned to Nathan, a huge smile spreading across his face. "I _told_ you all the personal stuff was important."

* * *

_**December 6th, 2007**_

"Why is it always this roof?" Nathan stood between Peter and the ledge, as if worrying that his little brother would suddenly announce his intention of jumping off--which, knowing Peter, was entirely possible.

"What is it with you and this place?"

"It has some nice memories." Peter peeked over the edge.

"Nice memories? Peter, the first time you jumped off this roof, you could have died. Then you threatened to jump off, just to get me to tell you about our dad. You call those nice memories?"

"It's kind of the first time we flew together, right? And the first time I used your power."

Nathan rolled his eyes. "So what, are you going to jump again? It's not dark enough for us to fly."

"No. We need to talk. And this place isn't bugged, and even if anyone's listening, the wind will cover what we're saying as long as we're quiet."

"Bugged?" He hadn't been expecting that. "What are you talking about?"

Peter told him what Sayid had said about Ben, then handed him the files he had received earlier that day.

"Jarrah's no fool," said Nathan, glancing through the notes. "We're lucky he's on our side. And he's right. We did underestimate Linus. He's dangerous."

Nathan felt like kicking himself for not anticipating the danger posed by Ben. Peter wouldn't even think of something like that: he just wasn't made that way. Claire was only a kid, too excited at the prospect of superhero antics to fully understand the risks involved. And Matt and Mohinder clearly expected him to take the lead.

The thing was, he should have. Nathan didn't understand how or when it had happened, but somehow he'd ended up with this responsibility. It was his job to keep them safe, to make sure that everything worked out.

"So what are we going to do, Nathan?" Peter's voice was filled with worry. "It sounds like this plan for getting back to the Island...it sounds like the whole thing was Ben's idea. That's why John called me. Maybe..."

Peter ducked his head, scuffing the ground with his toe. "Maybe Matt was right. Maybe it's Adam all over again. What if we're making a mistake?"

"No," said Nathan. He put a hand on his brother's shoulder, making him look up.

Thinking about what could happen in the next few weeks scared him. Hell, the whole thing scared him, from Peter's dreams to Ben Linus to the thought of going to this island.

But he also knew that, however, dangerous this might be, they were doing the right thing.

And he wasn't going to let Peter get scared into losing himself again.

"Your dreams, your paintings, Dr. Burke being trapped there, that's real. That's not part of Ben's agenda. Besides, Sayid wants to go back to the Island."

He walked back and forth, thinking.

"It's not the mission that's the problem, it's who's in control. We need to beat Ben at his own game."

"What about mind control?" Peter looked at him hopefully. "Matt stopped you guys from talking, at the mental institution--wouldn't that work?"

"It wears off," said Nathan, shaking his head. "Those journalists in Odessa were back to normal the next day. We can't get Matt to do that twenty-four-seven: it'd wear him out. If Linus is as dangerous as Jarrah says...one slip, and that could be it."

"We could just lock him up," said Peter. "If we all used our powers, he couldn't fight against that."

Nathan stopped pacing. "Use your head, Pete," he said. "If that was all it took, Jarrah and his friends would have done that long ago."

"Oh. Yeah."

Nathan looked out at the sky, then turned back to Peter. "Look, stop worrying. We'll think of something. And when we do, then Ben won't be the one calling the shots anymore."


	14. Man of Science

**Man of Science...**

_**December 8th, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft, Lower Manhattan**_

"Peter, pay attention," said Molly, tapping her finger on the map. "We're _supposed_ to be practicing."

"Oh, right. Sorry." Peter turned his thoughts back to the task at hand. Molly and Hiro had come over to help him with their powers, and he was actually doing pretty well.

He'd found that jumping through space was easier than time, so they'd tried both separately before combining them, and his accuracy and range had improved with steady practice. Hiro accompanied him on each trip, just in case he made a mistake and couldn't get back on his own.

Molly had also turned out to be a surpringly good teacher, though she had a tendency to laugh at his mistakes. She'd decided to liven up the location exercises by searching for people she found "more interesting," as she put it.

"Who were we looking for this time?"

"The Jonas Brothers."

"Who?"

"Molly!" Mohinder looked up from his notes. "This is serious. And I hope you didn't bring those records here."

He then muttered something that sounded like, "make my ears bleed," and "what passes for music in America."

"I am being serious," said Molly. "You said we could practice with anyone. And you know, I thought Peter would be on their wavelength. He has kind of the same hair as Joe."

"I do not!" Peter was now staring at the covers of Molly's CDs in horror. He desperately hoped that Molly was just teasing him.

"Molly," said Claire, fighting back giggles. "You're breaking Peter's heart."

"Dude, I'm with you," said Hurley, looking over Peter's shoulder. "There's a big difference between emo bangs and a mullet."

"Would everyone please stop talking about my hair?"

"Molly, please," said Mohinder. "Choose another target."

"Oooh!" said Hiro, clapping his hands together. "Peter, find Matsuzaka Daisuke!"

"Who's that?" said Claire.

Peter grinned. "The rival team. He's a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. You know," he said to Hiro, "Nathan and I are Yankee fans."

"The Daisuke Gyroball will crush the Yankees! Hitting it is like trying to pick up jelly with chopsticks," said Hiro. "A-Rod, no chance. Jeet-ah, no chance. Pow!"

Nathan walked over to them. "Maybe it's time for a break," he said. Peter saw that he was tired--but he was smiling, too.

"Nathan," said Peter. "Have you found--"

"I'm thinking," said Nathan. "Do you think it's time to contact Shephard?"

"Not today," said Peter, checking his watch. "It's John's funeral, remember? I'm going this afternoon."

"All right, fine," said Nathan. He sat down next to them. "We'll wait a few days."

Peter was about to go back to locating Joe Jonas, when Nathan asked, "Just how well did you know Shephard, anyway?"

* * *

_**December 2005**_

_**Columbia University Medical Center**_

Jack first noticed Peter Petrelli in the hospital cafeteria.

He usually ate alone--he hated talking shop, and he was no good at introductions--but somehow, before he knew it, he was sitting down at the same table as Peter.

Most of the people at the hospital treated him with a mixture of fear and respect. They knew his professional reputation, but they also knew about the crash. That is, they knew what they'd read in the papers. Or in some cases, websites that claimed to expose the Oceanic Six Cover-Up, though none of them came close to the actual truth.

Quite a few people had come up to him, claiming to have noticed inconsistencies in their story. He remembered a Dr. Hodgins from the Jeffersonian Institute who'd been particularly persistent. Even the people who weren't conspiracy nuts were dying to know more, especially about the settlement from Oceanic Airlines.

Half of the people Jack had met after getting back from the Island immediately started looking for clues that would tell them exactly how much he'd got stashed in his bank account. The other half--mostly med students--stared at him as if they expected him to sprout wings and fly. None of them would look him in the eye.

Peter, however, was different.

"Hi, Dr. Shephard." He smiled.

Jack noticed that he was eating a sandwich and fruit salad. Extra strawberries. Edna _never_ gave anyone extra strawberries. This kid must be popular with the staff.

"Hey. I'm sorry, you are..."

"Peter Petrelli." The name sounded familiar to Jack, but he couldn't quite place it.

"You're in nursing school, right? I've seen you on the clinical rounds."

"Yeah," said Peter. "How's Jim?"

When Jack looked puzzled, Peter elaborated. "James Maxwell. One of the new patients."

Jack's face cleared. "Oh, the osteochondroma. The surgery went well, and I think we caught the tumor before it began to metastasize. If he sticks to the physical therapy, I think that there's at least a sixty to seventy per cent chance that he'll recover completely."

"Oh, good." Peter looked away, staring down at his half-eaten sandwich.

Jack got the feeling that he hadn't answered the question to Peter's satisfaction. His hunch was proved right when Peter turned back to him and said, "I meant...will he be able to play? You know, ice hockey? He was kind of counting on getting back on the team next season."

"Ice hockey." Jack remembered his father talking about some of the nurses on the staff.

_"It's the ridiculous sentimentality of these half-brained, soft-hearted idiots that makes our job so difficult. Talk to the patient, yes. Give them the old sympathy act: some semblance of comfort, of hope, so that they're mentally prepared for the surgery. An optimistic patient is a tractable patient, and god knows, anything that increases survival rates ought to be encouraged. But remember that everything you say and do should be with the specific aim of making the operation itself more successful. Don't get involved. Because, Jack, the moment you start thinking of a patient as a person instead of a case, that's when you'll lose it. That's when you stop being a doctor and start being a nurse. Or worse, a goddamn shrink."_

Peter was still waiting for his answer.

"Peter, I'm sure that getting back on the team is really important to this kid. But that's not what he needs to be concentrating on right now. He's lucky to be alive. The best thing for him is to focus on his physical therapy. Later on, maybe, he can think about sports. I'm really sorry, but I can't give a definite answer. For one thing, it's hospital policy--we'd be risking a lawsuit."

"Oh, right, okay. I get it." Peter looked disappointed, and Jack felt like yelling at him. What did he expect? He wasn't a miracle worker. And the worst thing you could do in a situation like this was to offer false hope.

Jack suddenly remembered why the name Petrelli had sounded familiar. His father had talked about an Arthur Petrelli, the head of a huge law firm in New York city. Petrelli himself had defended one of Christian's friends in a malpractice suit several years back.

_"It's a good thing Richard could afford him. You get what you pay for, and he's one of the best."_

_"He could still lose, dad."_

_"Not Petrelli. If he's taken the case, that means he knows he can win. And if he can win, he will win."_

Jack hadn't asked if Richard Gillman was guilty. He knew. And his father had been right: he'd been cleared of all charges.

It occurred to him that if his own son hadn't been the one to give the final, damning evidence against him, Christian might have hired Arthur Petrelli to defend him, too. He and Peter could have ended up meeting under entirely different circumstances.

He took another look at Peter, who was pushing cubes of pineapple around his bowl, jabbing at them with his fork. His bangs kept falling into his eyes, and he absent-mindedly pushed them back with one hand.

Jack cleared his throat. "Your name sounds familiar, and I've been trying to place it. I think my father might have known your father, or at least known of him. Is he a lawyer?"

Peter didn't look up. "Yes."

Jack knew that he should back off, but something made him keep going.

"Nursing seems to be kind of an unusual profession for a Petrelli."

Peter turned back to him. "I didn't want to go into the family business. Not like Nathan. That's my older brother," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"So your brother's a lawyer, too."

"Yeah," said Peter. He smiled. "He's in the DA's office, though, not Dad's firm. He's really going to do something, make a difference."

Jack was surprised by Peter's enthusiasm, but he tried not to let it show. "I went into the family business." That was the phrase he'd used when talking to Rose on the beach. It felt like a thousand years ago. "I was born into it, I guess."

"But you love it," said Peter. "I've seen you in the OR. Being a doctor: it's part of you. Maybe you got there quicker because of your dad, but can you seriously see yourself doing anything else?"

Jack stared at him, suddenly feeling the truth of his words. His entire life, he'd thought that he'd followed in his father's footsteps because the thought of another career had never even entered his head.

He had enjoyed it, of course. Excising a tumor with a sweep of the scalpel, bringing a heart jumping back to life with a touch of the paddles, setting a compound fracture. Even so, he'd had no idea what he would have become if he'd taken a different path.

Now he knew. He'd have become a doctor anyway, or should have, wherever he was or whatever his father did for a living. He had come to realize that on the Island, bit by bit, when Sun brought him a sea urchin spine to use as an IV needle, when he cut the tumor out of Ben, when he came to himself on the beach after the crash and saw that man trapped under the wreckage.

But he hadn't said it to himself until this second.

"You're right," he said. There was wonder in his voice, amazement that he hadn't seen this sooner. In his surprise, he didn't even notice that Peter hadn't shown the same certainty about the law being the right profession for Nathan. "I guess you're right."

He hesitated, then went on, "Look, I know you're worried about...about James."

Part of his brain kept saying that this was a bad idea, but he ignored it. To hell with hospital protocol.

"And I really can't tell you anything for certain. He could be back on the ice in a few months. Then again, the tumor could recur and he could have to come back in the OR. Or worse. There's no way of knowing for sure. But I think there's a good chance that he will play again. Maybe not next season. But sometime."

Peter's entire face lit up. "That's great. I'll tell him. Or you could tell him yourself."

"Probably not a good idea," said Jack. "I've been told that my bedside manner leaves something to be desired."

"It's not that bad," said Peter. "At least you care. I mean, really care. I've seen a lot of doctors who don't."

"Maybe they're just afraid of what'll happen if they fail," said Jack. "Haven't you ever felt that way? Like you're afraid you'll screw up and make the wrong decision and you won't have what it takes to fix it?"

"All the time," said Peter, shaking his head ruefully. "My dad's been telling me that my whole life."

"What, that you won't have what it takes?"

"No, that I _don't_ have what it takes," said Peter, grinning. "But sometimes you just have to try it, you know? Take a leap of faith."

Jack remembered going down into the hatch after Locke. He'd wrapped his hands in cloth, protecting them from the rough surface of the rope. He'd seen traces of blood on the fibers that showed that Locke had gone down without any such precautions.

He looked at Peter, who was now happily finishing off his fruit salad, and thought that if he'd been in Jack's position he would have gone down even if there wasn't a rope: jumped in without any hesitation, trusting to the fates.

"Maybe you're right," he said. "I don't know if I could do that, but...maybe you're right."

* * *

_**February 2006**_

_**Columbia University Medical Center**_

A few months later, he saw Peter talking to another man in the hallway. At first he thought they were arguing, but upon closer inspection he saw that their gestures, though emphatic, weren't angry.

Jack walked up to the desk to hand in his charts, and couldn't help eavesdropping on their conversation.

"So you're really going on with this nonsense."

"Nathan, I've almost finished school. I'm this close to getting my license. Of course I'm not quitting."

So this was Nathan. Jack took a closer look at Peter's brother.

Now this was what he'd expected a Petrelli to look like. Expensive suit, silk tie, neatly cut hair. And something else--this guy walked and talked and stood like he owned the entire world and he expected everyone else to know it. Peter was right, he had "Most Likely To Succeed" stamped all over him.

He'd been so busy studying Nathan that he didn't catch the other's man's last words. Judging from Peter's response, he guessed that they'd been talking about their father.

"Dad's not paying for this. This is the one thing in the world he can't buy his way into or out of, so he doesn't get a say in what I do with my life, okay?" said Peter. "Do you want me to buy you lunch?"

Nathan shrugged. "What could you buy on your budget? Cafeteria food? An attack of salmonella is the last thing I need right now, Pete. Besides, I have a meeting to get to."

Jack expected Peter to react angrily, or at least look disappointed, but he just smiled. "You don't know what you're missing. The sandwiches are pretty great."

"Yeah, well, maybe next time," said Nathan, clapping Peter on the back. And with that, he turned and left.

Jack turned back to the desk and bent over his charts, pretending that he hadn't been watching them. He tried to picture what his own life might have been like if he'd had a brother, but he couldn't imagine being anything but an only child.

"Hi, Dr. Shephard." Peter had seen him.

Jack looked up. "Was that your brother?"

"Yeah. Sorry I didn't get to introduce you--he was in a hurry."

"No problem," said Jack. "You've almost finished your clinical training, right? Have you chosen a specialty?"

He knew that some people didn't like answering these questions; they thought it was an invasion of privacy, and they didn't like the stigma attached to some departments, like obstetrics or plastic surgery.

But somehow, he didn't think Peter would mind. And he wanted to know. He didn't usually pay much attention to the career paths of trainee nurses, but something about this kid piqued his curiosity.

Peter nodded. "I'm thinking about hospice care."

For a second, Jack didn't reply. He was surprised. From what he'd seen of Peter, he'd expected him to go for pediatrics or neonatology. Possibly emergency medicine. Not surgery--that was too impersonal.

But mostly he'd seen Peter soothing panicked parents, reassuring grief-stricken relatives, looking after children. He couldn't see him in a job that was so closely associated with death. Maybe his first impressions had been mistaken.

"It's not a very popular specialty," said Peter. He looked down, fiddling with a pen in his hands. "A lot of people think there's no point, because the patients are just going to die anyway."

"Actually, that wasn't what I was thinking at all." A year ago, two years ago, Jack _would_ have thought just that.

But that had been before the Island.

Before he'd placed his hand over the Marshal's mouth and nose and held it there until he suffocated, knowing that the slow agony of bleeding into his lungs would be infinitely worse.

Before he'd watched Boone writhing in pain on a makeshift bed and held a guillotine above his leg, weighing the pros and cons of amputation followed by gangrene poisoning against internal hemorrhaging and choking on your own blood.

Before he'd eased Libby into death using morphine made from a secret stash of heroin.

Before the moment in the OR when he'd thought for a split second that he might actually let Ben die, even though in his heart of hearts he'd known that he'd never be able to kill a patient.

He looked at Peter. "I think you've made a good choice. The right choice," he said. "I mean, the right choice for you. You'll be great at your job."

Jack had never been very good at the personal side of being a doctor; finding the right words, the right tone of voice, the right note of sympathy. He wasn't sure how to put what he felt into words.

But looking at Peter's answering smile, and the trust in his eyes, he thought that Peter understood.

* * *

_**December 8th, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft, Lower Manhattan**_

"Hey, Peter." Claire walked out onto the roof. "Are you going now?"

Peter turned when he heard her voice. "Yeah," he said. "I think it's about the right time."

She ran up to him. "Can I come with you?"

He hesitated. "Nathan said--"

"This is a _funeral_," said Claire. "There aren't going to be any guns involved, or anything. We're just going to watch. Besides, since when have you listened to what Nathan says?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Well, maybe," said Peter, smiling. "But you're his daughter. That's different."

"Please," said Claire. "Don't worry, they won't miss me for at least a few hours--I came up with a pretty good excuse."

Peter looked out at the sky, then back to Claire, considering the situation. Finally, he nodded. "Okay," he said. "We're going to fly--I don't think teleporting is worth the risk. All right with you?"

"Great," said Claire, breaking into a smile. "Let's go."

* * *

_**December 8th, 2007**_

_**Hoffs/Drawler Funeral Parlor, California**_

"Shh. Keep still."

"I'm trying!"

Claire was huddled in the doorway next to the funeral home, together with Peter. He had made himself invisible several blocks away and then taken her hand, shielding them both.

Now they were just waiting for someone to walk in, so they could follow them inside.

It had sounded like an ideal plan. The only problem was that they'd been waiting for what seemed like forever, and nobody had come.

Claire was starting to get pins and needles. She felt irritated with Locke's friends for not showing up. What kind of people went through a near-death experience together and didn't attend each other's funerals?

"Can't you just phase us through the door? You've been practicing using two powers at once."

"I can't risk it on this. What if I lose it and we just appear inside the room, out of thin air? Nathan would kill me."

"Isn't there anything you can do to make it work?"

"If I'm angry, or upset, it works better."

"What if I kicked you in the shins?"

"Very funny. Don't even think about it."

"Seriously, Peter, we've been waiting for _hours_. What if nobody comes?"

"It hasn't been hours. And somebody will come."

"Maybe Locke was really unpopular on the Island. What if they're all glad he's dead?"

"Jack will come."

"The doctor?"

They had all read about Dr. Shephard rescuing the car crash victims. Claire thought that if she had been through something like that she'd be kicking back with a pina colada right about now, not coming to a funeral.

"How do you know?"

"I just do."

Claire began to roll her eyes at Peter's reply when she stopped, realizing that she probably looked just like Nathan did whenever Peter claimed to "just know" something. Maybe that was in her genes, too.

At that moment, a Jeep pulled up across the road, music blasting from the speakers. She saw Peter perk up when he saw the driver. Go figure.

Claire watched as a bearded man wearing aviator sunglasses got out and walked across the road, a little unsteady on his feet.

Peter nudged her, and they got out of the way just in time as the man walked up to the funeral home and opened the door. They slipped in after him.

Claire was surprised. Peter hadn't said much about Jack Shephard: only that he was a brilliant surgeon, and a good person. This guy looked like a train wreck, and she couldn't imagine how he'd managed to carry out first aid, let alone surgery.

They watched as Jack walked up to the casket and stood in front of it, resting his hand on the polished wood. To Claire he looked lost, and afraid, and terribly, terribly sad.

Peter put out a hand as if to place it on Jack's shoulder, as Claire had seen him do with Nathan countless times, but he pulled back at the last moment.

Finally, Jack Shephard turned and walked out without opening the casket, putting his shades back on.

They followed him out into the sunlight.


	15. Man of Faith

**...Man of Faith.**

_**December 8th, 2007**_

_**Hoffs/Drawler Funeral Parlor, California**_

As they left the funeral home, Peter gripped Claire's arm so tightly that she almost cried out loud.

"Shh. Don't move," he whispered. "Look."

She looked where Peter was pointing, and saw a man sitting in a car, parked around the corner. "What? He seems pretty normal."

"That's Ben Linus."

Jack got into his Jeep and drove away. After a few minutes, Ben's car pulled out into the road and followed him.

Peter and Claire ran three blocks down to a deserted lot before he turned them visible again.

"He's going to talk to Jack today. I'm sure he is."

Claire bent over, trying to catch her breath. "Will he hurt him?"

"Sayid said Ben isn't that kind of guy. But we don't know what could happen," said Peter. "We have to tell the others."

She looked up at him. "We're teleporting back to New York, aren't we?"

Claire was actually looking forward to it: but she didn't even want to think about all the things that could go wrong.

"Yeah. Good thing I've been working on it. Here we go." Peter put his hands on Claire's shoulders and closed his eyes.

She knew that he was thinking of Hiro. She wasn't sure if it would help, but she tried to concentrate on Hiro, too: his laughter, his love of waffles, his obsession with Marvel and DC Comics...

"Peter! You scared the hell out of me! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Nathan, Matt, Hiro and Mohinder were staring at them. They'd landed right in the middle of Isaac's loft.

Hurley came rushing out of the back room, closely followed by Molly. "Dude, are you all right? What's wrong?"

"We're fine, Hurley," said Peter. "We're fine."

"It worked!" Claire started dancing around the room. "We didn't end up in Antarctica or anything! It worked!"

Peter turned to Nathan. "We saw Jack at John's funeral," he said. "Ben was there, too."

"We?" Nathan turned to Claire. "You went with him? After I told you not to--"

"Nothing happened," said Claire, coming to a stop in mid-pirouette. "I'm fine, see? And the important thing is that we saw Ben."

"Linus?" There was an edge in Nathan's voice. "Did he--"

Peter shook his head. "We were invisible. Nobody saw us. And Ben was there, and he was following Jack."

Nathan stared down at the floor, his arms crossed, frowning. Claire glanced around at the others--they were all watching him, too.

Finally, Matt broke the silence. "What should we do?"

"We don't even know how we're going to deal with Ben," said Peter. "Do we, Nathan?"

"We've been talking about it while you were gone. And we have an idea." Nathan put up a hand to forestall Peter's protests. "On the roof--don't worry, he didn't hear us. We're lucky he's in California now."

Nathan looked around the room. "I think we should do it tonight. Before Linus pulls any more tricks. Are you guys ready for this?"

"Of course," said Hiro. "You say go, we go, Nathan."

"Okay," said Nathan. "Suresh, you're good staying here, right?"

"Yes," said Mohinder. "I'll make sure Molly and Hurley are safe."

Finally, Nathan turned to look at Matt, who hadn't said anything. "You ready, Parkman?"

Matt hesitated. "I...I'm not sure."

"Don't tell me you're not sure," said Nathan. "You have to be sure. Peter, I know you think we have to go right now."

"Yeah, I do."

"Rushing into this isn't going to help anyone. No, listen to me. We have a few hours, and we should use them. We need to get Jarrah to help us. We need to lay out a plan of attack. We need to play to our strengths, we need to know where the enemy is and what they're doing, and we need to time this well."

He stood still for a minute, thinking. "Why not use Ben? Why not make him do the hard work for us? We'll wait until _after_ he's convinced Shephard. Then we'll make our move."

"Okay," said Nathan. He stepped over to the table. "Here's what we're going to do."

* * *

_**December 8th, 2007**_

_**Joe's Bar, Los Angeles, California**_

He was going back to the funeral home. He knew that. He knew he'd have to open the casket eventually--look at what was left of John Locke.

He just needed a drink first.

"Hey, Doc, the usual?" The bartender reached for a bottle of scotch.

"No." Hearing the nickname reminded him of Sawyer, making his stomach clench.

"A tequila and tonic. With a wedge of lemon." Ana Lucia's drink.

Why not? Drinking hadn't helped him to forget. Why not remember? He'd stop trying to block the memories out: instead, he'd let them in. Welcome them in.

The smell of wild boar roasting over the fire, Locke cleaning the skins with sand and palm leaves before stretching them over bamboo frames. Sawyer sitting under a tree, reading a battered copy of _Watership Down._ Juliet smiling as she went through the medical supplies, humming the chorus to "Downtown." Charlie strumming on his guitar in the background as Rose and Bernard argued about how to set the table. Sayid listening to Hurley's list of his All Time 50 Most Awesome Star Trek Episodes. Sun and Kate working in the garden, kneeling in the warm earth, placing guava seeds gently into the furrows.

Kate.

_"I still have to explain why you aren't there to read to him, so don't you dare say his name!"_

Kate was right. There was no going back. Even if they wanted to. It was another world, a lost world. Once you left, it was forever.

Jack looked up at the TV hanging over the bar. It was Golden Oldies night. They were showing _Carol Burnett._ His father's favorite form of after-work relaxation.

This had to be some kind of cosmic joke. He needed another drink.

* * *

_**April 2006**_

_**Manhattan, New York**_

Of all the places he might have expected to see Peter Petrelli outside work, a bar would have been one of the last on Jack's list. He just didn't seem like the drinking type.

He'd started on his first scotch when he saw Peter a few seats away, staring into his own drink. He'd barely touched it.

He was wearing a suit and had his hair slicked back, but some of it had come loose and was falling into his eyes, as usual. Only this time he didn't bother to brush it out of his face.

Jack watched him for a few moments. He'd grown so used to seeing Peter in scrubs, or in a hoodie and jeans, that it was weird seeing him in formal clothes. He looked like a kid going to the prom.

Peter looked up and caught his eye. Jack wondered whether he should say something--it looked like he wanted to be left alone--but Peter spoke first.

"Hi."

"Hi, Peter."

"I thought you'd left New York."

"I'm leaving tomorrow. Just spending one more night in the city."

"Oh."

Jack waited for Peter to continue. When he didn't, he said, "Are you okay?"

Peter didn't look up. "Our dad died this morning."

"Oh. I'm..." Jack wasn't sure what to say. From what he'd seen and heard, Peter and Mr. Petrelli made him and his dad look relatively functional.

Should he say he was sorry? Well, obviously he was sorry, but that sounded hopelessly inadequate. Instead he said,

"I buried my dad recently. He died in Australia. That's why I was on the plane. I was taking his body back to America." He paused. "I know it's hard. I mean, he and I, we didn't have a particularly good relationship, but it was still hard."

He wasn't sure why the hell he was saying all of this to someone he'd only met a few months ago. He'd had a hard enough time talking to Kate about his father's death, for crying out loud.

"I thought he hated me," said Jack. "And he thought I hated him. He died thinking that. It took me a long time to make my peace with it. Sometimes I'm still not sure if I have."

Peter shook his head. "It's not hard because of my father. It's hard because of Nathan."

"Nathan?" This wasn't exactly what Jack had expected.

"Nathan really loved our dad," said Peter. "And it's killing him that--" he broke off, and swallowed the rest of his drink in one glass.

He stared into the empty glass and spoke without looking at Jack. "You probably know what kind of man our father was."

When Jack didn't reply, Peter continued, "The DA wanted Nathan to take down one of his biggest clients. Dad would have gone down with him. Nathan wasn't going to do it. I didn't want him to, either. He was still our father. Besides, Nathan could never have done that to him."

"But something happened that...anyway, Nathan changed his mind. I was going to testify. Then this morning..."

Peter finally turned to face Jack. "Nathan said we should be grateful. Grateful that he never knew his sons were going to stab him in the back. He won't talk to me. I can't...he isn't _there_ anymore."

Jack thought that he finally understood a little of what the Petrellis were going through. He shouldn't have been told any of this, of course: for one thing, the District Attorney's plans should have been kept under wraps. But somehow, he wasn't surprised that Peter was trusting him with his secrets.

He remembered how it had felt to turn in his own father. It had been a betrayal, though he'd tried to tell himself otherwise at the time. He'd had a choice. Not much of a choice, but a choice nevertheless.

In the end, there had been only one thing he could do without losing himself forever. The downside was that he'd lost his father instead.

That is, until he found him again, that day on the Island when Sawyer had told him about a chance meeting with Christian Shephard in a bar in Australia, and a conversation about fathers, and sons, and guilt, and courage. And the Red Sox.

"I think your dad loved you both, Peter. And no matter what you did, if you did the right thing, then he would have forgiven you. He would have been proud of you. At the end of the day, he's still your dad."

Peter shook his head again. "It's not about whether Dad would have forgiven us. He might have, he might not. I just don't know if Nathan can forgive himself."

He paid for his drink.

"Thank you, anyway. Have a safe trip back to California. Maybe we'll meet again sometime."

* * *

_**March 4th, 2007**_

_**Arrivals, John F. Kennedy Airport, New York**_

The next time Jack came to New York it was only for a few days. He'd been invited as a guest speaker for an international medical conference. He'd thought about refusing, but decided that it wasn't worth pissing off all the organizers.

People still glanced at him oddly whenever he walked through an airport, stared when they thought he wasn't looking. Some of them were simply curious, others more wary. He knew that most of them were hoping that he wouldn't be on their flight.

He wanted to tell them that such concerns were completely irrational: flying with him wouldn't make it any more likely that the plane would go down in flames. In fact, statistically it was almost impossible that he would be involved in two plane crashes in such quick succession.

Of course, he'd seen not only the almost impossible, but what he would previously have classified as "impossible" more times than he could count. But that was on the Island--no, the _island_, he thought, removing the capitalization in his head.

He was back in the real world now, where things made sense and could be explained and fixed and he didn't have to worry about the impossible.

Only the improbable.

He was hurrying towards the exit to hail a cab, when a familiar voice made him turn around.

"Relax, Nathan. She'll be here."

At first Jack thought he might have been mistaken, but he soon caught sight of Peter Petrelli in the crowd, eagerly watching the arriving passengers. His hair was shorter, and he looked happier than he had the last time Jack had seen him.

His brother, on the other hand, appeared awkward and ill at ease, folding and unfolding his arms.

"For chrissakes, Pete, I'm not nervous. I wasn't even planning on coming. You're the one who dragged me down here in the first place, anyway. Ma was going to send the driver to pick her up."

"First of all, I dragged you down here because I knew you wanted to come. You just didn't know what you wanted. Second of all, we couldn't have sent a chauffeur to meet her after she'd flown all the way across the country. And lastly, she wants you to be here too. She just thinks you don't want to be here."

"Whatever, Peter. Do you know how many appointments I'm missing right now? It's you she's coming to see, anyway."

"No, I'm not." Peter turned to Nathan and grinned. "Well yeah, I'm one of the reasons, but she's coming to see us. All of us. Even Mom."

He paused, looking more thoughtful. "She's a lot like Mom, you know, even though she'd die before she'd admit it. She's a lot like you, too."

"Great," said Nathan. "We're one big happy family."

"We _are_ a family," said Peter. "You're her father."

"A father is someone who's made up bottles and changed diapers and assembled train sets and read report cards, Peter. I don't have time for this. It's too late for all that now."

Nathan's face looked closed off, betraying almost no emotion. But the time Jack had spent on the Island had made him much better at reading facial expressions and interpreting tones of voice, and he thought that this Nathan looked different from the one he'd met in the hospital, different from the one Peter had talked about in the bar.

He sounded unsure. A little hopeful. A little scared.

Peter put an arm around his brother's shoulder. "It's never too late." Suddenly, his face lit up as he spotted a face in the crowd.

"Peter!"

"Claire!"

Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw a flash of blonde hair as a girl ran across the floor and launched herself at Peter, and for one crazy moment he thought it was _his_ Claire, the Claire he'd thought had died on the Island, the Claire whom he'd treated and talked to and looked after and said good morning to countless times without even knowing that she was his sister.

He'd gone back and checked his father's records, and he'd found enough to know that Christian had visited Claire more than once. Enough to know that he'd tried to see his daughter when he thought his son had pushed him away.

He'd wondered whether Claire had talked to his father--their father. He wanted to know what they'd said to each other, how she felt about him, whether his dad had told her anything about his other life in America. And now he would never know.

Jack roused himself from his reverie and looked back at the Petrellis. Peter and Claire were still hugging, Claire laughing and crying as Peter swung her around in the air and placed her gently on her feet again. Nathan stood to the side, waiting until Claire finally let Peter go and walked up to him.

"Hi, Nathan." She looked down, scuffing her shoes on the floor and twisting her fingers together before finally putting out her hand. Nathan hesitated for a few seconds, then reached out and shook it.

"Hello, Claire." He cleared his throat. "Well. The car's waiting outside, so if you've got everything we'd better get going. That is, if you want to."

Claire grinned. "Okay. Let's go."

Jack watched them leave, the brothers each taking one of Claire's bags as she walked between them, talking non-stop to Peter as Nathan looked on, the glimmer of a smile on his face.

He stood there for a long time after they were gone, thinking about the sister he'd never known, and her son--his nephew. He thought about his father, flying to Australia when he'd hit rock bottom, trying to make up for missed opportunities and lost time.

Jack made up his mind. He walked over to the nearest payphone, dialed the number he already knew by heart. He waited--one, two, three rings before she picked up.

"Kate?"

"Jack, is that you?" She sounded surprised, then worried. "I thought you were going to New York. Is everything OK? Did something happen?"

"Everything's fine." He took a deep breath. "I was just thinking, I mean wondering...that is...what you said before, what I said..."

He realized that he wasn't getting anywhere, and decided to just get to the point. "I called because I want to see him. Aaron, I mean. When I get back, I'd like to see him. If that's okay with you."

There was a long silence at the other end, and for a moment he wondered if he'd made a colossal mistake. Then she spoke.

"Oh, I'm so glad." He wasn't sure, but he thought she might be crying. "I'm so glad."

"Good. That's good." He wasn't even sure what he was saying. Finally he managed to form a complete sentence. "I'll see you both when I get back."

When Jack walked out into the sunshine, he felt both elated and terrified, as if he'd just walked off a cliff into thin air. Maybe it would work out. Maybe it wouldn't.

But Peter was right. It was never too late.

* * *

_**December 8th, 2007**_

_**Joe's Bar, Los Angeles, California**_

_"Perhaps I can help you with that. This is the way it has to be, Jack. It's the only way. You have to do it together, all of you."_

_"How?"_

_"I have a few ideas."_

Jack sat down at the bar. He'd actually contemplated taking advice from Ben.

The truth was that he didn't know what else to do. Because however much he hated and despised Ben, however much the sight of his cold, reptilian eyes made Jack want to beat him to a bloody pulp, he couldn't deny that Ben knew what he was doing.

If he said that he knew how to get everyone back to the Island, he was telling the truth, or at least part of the truth.

Of course, that knowledge would come with a price. Jack just didn't know if it would be worth paying.

He raised his glass, but before he could drink, someone sat down next to him.

"Hi, Jack."

For a moment, Jack didn't recognize him. Then he remembered.

"Peter?" Maybe he was hallucinating. What was Peter Petrelli doing here?

As if he'd read his mind, Peter said, "I'm here to help you and your friends get back to the Island."

"You're what?" Jack felt his head spinning. Maybe he'd drunk more that day than he'd realized. Or maybe--maybe this was what Ben had been talking about.

"Is this some kind of sick joke? If Ben sent you here--"

"No, he didn't. We're doing this without him."

"If Ben is involved, it'll go wrong, somehow. He's setting you up. He does that. Messes with your head. I was an idiot to even think about trusting him."

"I told you that we don't have anything to do with Ben."

"Don't be so sure."

Jack could still see the submarine going up in flames, an explosion that lit up the night sky and thundered in their ears. He could see the horror on Juliet's face, and Locke kneeling before him, holding up his hands in surrender.

He shook his head. "Ben's behind everything. He's manipulating you."

"So what if he is?" said Peter. He bent towards Jack. "You know you have to go back. And I bet we have a few tricks even Ben doesn't know about. Jack, look at me. Let me just tell you what we know first. Let me tell you what my friends are doing right now."

By the time Peter had finished, Jack was clutching his head, trying to take it all in.

"Let me get this straight. You're trying to convince me that you have superpowers."

"Yes."

"And that you can use these powers to get us back to the Island."

"Yes."

"And that you've somehow managed to convince most of my friends to go back, too."

"Yes."

_I wonder how drunk I am,_ thought Jack. _I must be pretty goddamn drunk if I could dream up all this._

The next second, he almost fell out of his seat. He could hear Peter's voice inside his head.

_You're not that drunk. And you don't have to believe. Not yet. You just have to watch._

Then Peter drew out a knife from his pocket and sliced it diagonally across his palm, leaving a trail of blood. Jack almost cried out, before reaching instinctively for his hand to try and stop the bleeding.

As he watched, the lips of the wound drew together and sealed. Peter wiped the blood away to show the skin underneath, untouched and unharmed.

"Just one more," he said, smiling. "I know you're a skeptic."

He checked to make sure that the bartender wasn't looking, and pointed to Jack's drink.

An ice cube sailed into the air before doing a quick tap dance on the rim of the glass, executing a neat somersault, and jumping into the scotch.

Jack stared at Peter. "I think I'm going crazy."

"Crazy people don't think they're going crazy," Peter replied. "They think they're getting saner."

He then said, "John Locke told you that too, right?"

"How did you--" Jack shook his head. "Okay, I believe you."

He wasn't sure whether he was talking to Peter, or to Locke. He just knew that he couldn't keep denying what was happening.

"So come with us," said Peter. "You want to, don't you? You know you have to."

Peter put a hand on his shoulder, looked him straight in the eyes, and went on.

"You don't have to lie anymore. It's okay. I know you're sick of it. I know you're tired. I know you think you've failed. But we all fail, Jack. Over and over again. We all screw up. What matters is that we try. Nathan showed me that."

"I don't have what it takes."

His response was almost a reflex. All of a sudden the memories were pressing in on Jack from all sides, rushing back in a flood, faces, voices, everyone he'd failed to save, everyone he'd failed, period.

_"I will fix you."_

_"Boone, listen to me. Listen. I'm gonna fix this, okay? I'm gonna save you."_

_"Well, Rose, I'll keep you company. Until your husband gets back."_

_"I said that I'd get everyone safely off this island, and that's what I'm gonna do."_

_"I will fix you."_

But Peter was still talking.

"Jack, when you were at the hospital, the thing I heard most about you was that you were absolutely committed. If you made a promise, you'd keep it. If you started something, you'd see it through. Even if everyone else wanted to let you off the hook."

"Well, I'm not letting you off the hook now. And neither are your friends. And the thing is, you don't want them to. Not this time. Do you, Jack?"

Peter's tone was earnest, gently insistent. Jack looked up, the fog that had been clouding his thoughts and obscuring his vision lifting for the first time in weeks. He shook his head.

"No. I don't."

"Then you can fix it," said Peter. "If you come with us. You can still fix it."

When the bartender came back after serving another customer, he saw that the doctor had paid the bill and left.

He was somewhat puzzled, though, when he realized that the guy hadn't touched his drink.


	16. Blitzkrieg

**Blitzkrieg**

_**December 8th, 2007**_

_**Somewhere in California**_

"Is this it?" Nathan looked down the corridor. Hiro had teleported them down to California, and was currently standing guard outside, ready to warn them if anyone came in.

"If the girl Molly is as good at this as you say she is, then yes," said Sayid. "Let's go in."

They walked up to one of the rooms. Someone was inside--they could see the light shining from under the door.

"Now," said Nathan.

They kicked down the door and walked into the room. Nathan saw a short, balding man sitting behind the desk wearing round-rimmed spectacles, reading through some papers.

He was surprised. After everything he'd read in Jarrah's files, he hadn't expected Benjamin Linus to be so ordinary. He looked like an accountant.

And, worryingly enough, he didn't seem to be at all surprised by their entrance.

"Well, isn't this nice," said Ben. "Welcome, both of you. How are you getting on?"

"You should know, given that you've been spying on us." Nathan walked into the room, standing in front of Ben's desk. He could hear Sayid come in behind him.

"I was merely trying to extend some courtesy. Though I must say, your own manners leave something to be desired."

"We're not here to talk," said Nathan.

"Really." Ben removed his glasses.

Sayid pulled out a gun and pointed it at Ben's head. "Put your hands in the air."

"Sayid, I expected better from you," said Ben. "Your assignments with me aren't yet completed. Can it really be that you are forgetting your grief so quickly? I'm losing my faith in the constancy of true love."

"You may consider our agreement terminated as of this moment. Now, put your hands in the air."

Ben slowly raised his arms. "This is so unnecessary. How would Peter feel if he knew you were resorting to such measures? I thought that the new and improved Nathan Petrelli was above such things."

Nathan could see why Sayid hated Ben. Something about his voice made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He'd spent about thirty seconds with the guy, and he already felt like punching him in the face for even mentioning Peter's name.

"Leave my brother out of it."

"You've done a pretty good job of that yourself. That's why it's just you and Sayid, isn't it?"

Ben stood up, keeping his arms raised. "You wanted to shelter the innocents. Very touching."

Nathan hoped that his surprise hadn't shown on his face. How the hell had Ben known that?

"Don't listen to him," said Sayid.

"Why don't we all calm down and talk about this like rational human beings," said Ben. "I have the highest respect for you both. But if you will allow me to say so, I've found that heroes have a regrettable tendency to simply launch into action, when a little thought could save us all so much trouble. We all know that you can't afford to kill me. The knowledge I possess is too valuable--"

"We are not here to kill you," said Sayid.

"Well, that works out well for both of us," said Ben.

"Oh, I don't think so," said Nathan. He didn't think Linus knew what was coming--at least, he hoped to god that he didn't.

"You may find this difficult to understand, Nathan, but I have absolutely no objections to being taken hostage. Really, if you only intend to keep me tied up and beat me whenever you want information, then Jack could have managed that perfectly well on his own. And don't imagine that any other form of torture will prove effective."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," said Nathan.

_Now, Matt,_ Nathan thought. _Do it now._

* * *

The next second, Nathan and Sayid had vanished, together with the entire room.

"Hi, Ben."

"Who's there?" Ben looked around, recognizing his new surroundings.

It was his father's old house, back on the Island.

"Very amusing, Nathan," he said. "I see you aren't quite devoid of originality. This is certainly more uncomfortable than your average cell."

There was no reply.

"You can let me out now."

"But Ben, I don't have the key. You do."

Ben recognized the voice, and froze. It couldn't be. "Annie?"

"Over here."

He whirled around, but the room was empty. He suddenly noticed that the air smelt of stale beer and Dharma cigarettes.

"You're providing illusory entertainment for all my senses. How very thoughtful of you."

Ben's tone remained flippant and unconcerned--but the cigarette smoke was making his stomach turn. Or maybe it was the smell of congealed grease coming from the kitchen.

He noticed something lying on the sofa, and went to look at it. It was the wooden doll Annie had given him on his birthday. He picked it up.

It spoke.

"Happy birthday, Ben."

"It's not my birthday."

"In here, it's your birthday every day."

"No." Ben dropped the doll. It fell on the floor, snapping in half at the neck. The head rolled across the carpet and towards the door, which began to open.

Someone was coming in.

"You have the key, Ben. But you don't get to leave."

"Juliet?"

"Is that who I am?" She stepped into the room, her blonde hair loose over her shoulders. "They said I looked just like her. Do I, Ben?"

As Ben watched, Juliet changed, becoming slightly shorter, her hair slightly longer, her expression more gentle, her practical clothes replaced by a blue cotton dress.

"Mom?"

She was gone.

Ben ran to the door and wrenched it open, but there was no sign of her. He knew where he had to go: he made straight for the place where he'd last seen her, at the edge of the Dharma compound.

He ran through the forest, heart pounding, the leaves and branches scratching his face and arms, until he finally came to the clearing and was standing in front of the sonar fence, panting and clutching at the stitch in his side.

"Where are you? Mom? Where are you?"

He bent down and disabled the security system, tapping in the code with trembling fingers.

"Parkman! Matt! I don't care if it's fake, all right? I just want to see her."

"I'm afraid you're not ready for that, Ben." A voice spoke over his shoulder.

Ben turned to see Richard. He was standing next to Roger Linus.

"A chip off the old block, aren't you, you little nuisance," said Roger.

"I'm not like you. I'm different. I have power now. I'm a leader. People respect me!"

"Really? Why don't you take a look at yourself and tell me that again."

Ben looked down. His old clothes were gone. He was wearing the Dharma Initiative overalls.

His father jabbed at the label. "Ben. The Work. Man. That's all you'll ever be."

"I'm sorry Ben," said Richard. "I thought you might be different. You weren't."

"Happy fucking birthday. I finally remembered. Satisfied?" His father smirked, raising his arm. "Now it's time to pay you back for what you did to me."

Before Ben could move, thick choking gas was filling the air, stinging his eyes and nose and throat. He blacked out.

When he woke up, he was no longer outside. Ben got up slowly, carefully, then looked around him.

He was in a cage. But he wasn't alone.

A giant white rabbit sat in one corner, its nose and ears quivering. Its glowing red eyes stared at Ben. He backed away, pressing up against the bars of the cage.

"Daddy!"

"Alex?"

The voice was coming from his left. Alex was standing with her arms stretched out towards him.

As he watched, the wall separating them disappeared. He could get out.

"Daddy, you killed me." Patches of blood blossomed on her shirt.

"No. No, you don't understand. It was a mistake. It was an accident."

"You killed me. You let him kill me. You said I was nothing, that I didn't matter to you. I'm not your daughter."

"Yes, you are. Alex--"

He stepped towards her, but the rabbit got there first, running towards the opening in the wall.

A terrible keening scream cut through the air.

The rabbit remained suspended in mid-jump, writhing in pain as the trap kicked into action, its eyes dilating in terror.

Its feet scrabbled desperately for a foothold as the veins in its ears began to swell, bulging out against the delicate pink skin until they were on the point of bursting.

As Ben watched, its neck arched back and lengthened, its fur disappeared, its form changed from rabbit to human. A girl.

His daughter.

"No, Alex, you were just there, you--you're not real!"

"We're both me, Daddy. I'm just showing you what it felt like to die."

The first Alex still stood beyond the opening. "You've always liked using people, haven't you, Daddy? Just to save your own neck."

"Daddy! Daddy! Help me!" The Alex in the trap was crying, sobbing, choking as her arms and legs bent and straightened in pain, jerking through the air like a marionette being pulled by invisible strings.

Ben tried to close his eyes, but couldn't: he saw the blood streaming from her nostrils and filling her wide, terrified eyes, running down her face and into her hair as she hung in the air.

She never stopped screaming.

Finally, she dropped to the ground and lay still, her legs twitching in sudden spasms. Frothy white bubbles appeared at her mouth, dotted with flecks of blood.

Ben felt a hand on his shoulder.

He whirled around, but there was nobody there. Just a voice.

"You killed her, Ben. Just like you killed me."

His mother was on the other side of the trap.

"You killed me, Ben. And you killed your father. On your birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Benjamin, Happy birthday to you."

"Today isn't my birthday!"

"We told you, Ben. In here, it's your birthday every day. Every single day, Ben. Isn't that funny?"

She began to laugh, her voice rising higher and higher. "Don't you think that's funny? Why aren't you laughing, Ben? Don't you like your present?"

"Stop it. Stop!" Ben knelt on the ground and put his hands over his ears. "Make it stop! This isn't real! It's not! It's not!"

"You can see it, hear it, smell it, touch it, taste it. It's real, Ben."

Matt was standing in front of him.

"We could keep you in here forever, just come back in when we need answers. And we could make you tell the truth. Your mother could make you. Alex could make you. You don't know how to get out."

"I'll give you anything you want. Anything. Just don't do this to me."

"I'm sorry, Ben. Not yet. If you do as we say, I'll make sure it's not too bad for you."

Ben knew he had to say something to make Parkman change his mind. There had to be something. Everyone had a trigger.

If he could only put his mother's laughter out of his mind. If only his daughter's screams would stop ringing in his ears. If only he weren't wearing these damned overalls. If only he could blot out the memory of blood dripping from Alex's wounds.

If only it would be quiet inside his head, just for a minute, he could remember what to say, and how to say it.

Ben pressed his forehead to the floor, taking deep gasping breaths. He just had to think.

* * *

Matt looked at the man groveling on the floor in front of him.

So this was Benjamin Linus. From everything Matt had heard about him, he was a rat in human form. And he looked like one, too.

He hadn't known what would happen when he started using his father's power: his experience had taught him that the nightmares came from inside the other person. All he had to do was awaken their fears and anxieties, press the switch, then watch what happened.

After what Sayid had told them about Ben, he'd been prepared for something horrible. Even so, he'd been astonished and sickened by some of the things that came out of Ben's head. He wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.

But just when Matt was about to leave, Ben began to speak.

"Matt, I'm sure you're flattered by the fact that Nathan chose you for this task. Chose you over his own brother."

"Stop talking, or I'll bring them back."

"But you want to hear what I have to say, don't you, Matt? That's why you're still here. Because he did choose you, didn't he? He didn't want Peter to do this."

For the first time, Matt felt a twinge of uncertainty. He knew that he should get the hell out of there right now.

And yet, he couldn't. He kept listening to Ben's words, which were coming in a steady stream, his quiet, soothing, hypnotic voice telling him everything he'd been afraid of but had refused to let himself think about.

"The all-powerful Peter Petrelli, gifted, special. I'm sure the thought crossed your mind that he might end up making you...redundant. Good thing that didn't happen. He wasn't the right man for _this_ assignment, was he?"

"I volunteered." Matt swallowed, trying to look away. But somehow, Ben's eyes held him.

"And Peter didn't? I can't see our boy resisting the opportunity. I'm sure it must have been your stellar track record with difficult and challenging tasks that sealed the deal."

Matt remembered the times Peter had tried to join them, and Nathan had shut him down. Nathan had been right, of course--Peter had just started to get used to mind-reading, never mind creating illusions. It would have been insanity to let him try this. He, Matt, had been the best choice.

He'd been the only choice.

"I can do this." Matt's voice was shaking. He thought of everyone who was counting on him to get this right. "I can."

"I'm sure you can. The question is, whether you _should_. Rather morally questionable, isn't it? But Nathan clearly thought you were up to it. An excellent judge of character, your friend Nathan."

"He is," said a voice.

But it didn't belong to Matt.

"Peter?"

Matt turned to see Peter standing behind him.

"Matt, he's lying to you. He's saying these things because it's working. You're getting to him."

He stepped closer.

"You can do this, I can't. I could never do this--Nathan was right. I'd just screw it up. Your power--you can use it in ways I can't even dream about."

"Isn't that convenient," said Ben. "The truth is that Nathan wanted you to do his dirty work, Matt, so his beloved brother could keep his hands clean. You're nothing but a lackey for the Petrellis."

"Shut up!" Matt shouted.

He knew Peter was telling the truth. He had to focus on that. He had to ignore the voice in his head that agreed with Ben. He had to.

"You know Nathan isn't like that, Matt," said Peter. "He's your friend. He cares about you. He told me everything you did together--"

"Everything you did together when Peter wasn't there," said Ben, breaking in. "Convenient, isn't it, how you just got shunted off to the side when he came back. Then again, what else is new?"

"You're the one in control, Matt," said Peter. "You're stronger than he is. Don't let him do this to you."

"You're acting like your father, Matt," said Ben. "You've sunk that low."

Matt stared at Ben, his face clearing, his thoughts regaining their focus. He did remember.

His father had tricked him in the same way, when they'd seen each other for the first time in fifteen years. Almost everything Maury had told him had been the truth--but it had been the truth twisted and distorted until it was as good as a lie. And Matt had fallen for it.

"No, I haven't," said Matt. "I haven't sunk that low."

Matt heard his voice growing stronger, felt his confidence flooding back. "And I'm not like my dad."

He remembered Maury's voice, his face, the movement of his hands as he'd talked to Matt and Nathan. He'd looked so convincing, sounded so sincere. Matt hadn't been able to look away, hadn't been able to resist listening to him, trusting him.

But in the end, he'd turned out to be less than worthless. Matt couldn't believe that he'd spent all those years haunted by a man like that: a pathetic small-time crook who was scared of his own kitchen.

He wasn't going to let that happen again.

Matt spoke to Ben. "My dad did give me nightmares. But they weren't like this. They weren't like yours. He couldn't show me something that wasn't already there."

"All this," Matt gestured to the cage and Alex's body. "This isn't from me. It's from you. From inside your sick, twisted mind. My dad deserved what he got. So do you."

He bent down to look Ben in the face. "You were right about one thing, though, Ben. I am the right guy for this job. You know why?"

He stood up and put a hand on Peter's shoulder. "Because I've done it before."

Then they disappeared, leaving Ben in the cage.

Matt opened the door to Ben's office. He stood there for a moment, watching Sayid and Nathan. They hadn't seen him yet.

Hiro appeared next to him. "Matt!" He looked worried. "Are you OK? There is...crash inside. Bang."

"I'm fine."

Nathan turned when he heard their voices. "That was him," he said, pointing to Ben's body, lying on the floor. "He went down like a ton of bricks."

"Is it over?" Sayid bent over Ben. "Is he--"

"Yes, it's over." Matt walked in, followed by Hiro. "He's not dead. He's just...asleep."

"It had to be done," said Sayid. "Thank you."

"You did good, Matt," said Nathan. "I know it wasn't easy."

"Yatta!" said Hiro, pumping his fist and grinning from ear to ear. "You beat villain." He stopped, then shook his head, pushing his glasses up his nose. "You beat _the_ villain."

Matt grinned. "I guess I did."

"You were great," said Peter, entering the room.

"Peter," Hiro gestured to Ben. "Look! Matt did it."

Nathan's eyes widened. "Peter? I thought you were with Shephard."

"I finished early," said Peter. "Jack's waiting back at the loft, but I was worried about you guys. I just listened in, that's all. I didn't do anything."

"You listened in. To the nightmare." Nathan shook his head. "I swear, one of these days you're really going to get into trouble."

"It's a good thing he came," said Matt. "I almost lost it in there. Ben was saying these things--"

"What things?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Yeah it does, Matt," said Nathan. "What did he say?"

"He said..." Matt felt his face turning red. "He said I was a lackey. That you just got me to do this because you wanted to keep Peter from doing it."

Nathan opened his mouth, but Matt broke in before he could say anything. "It's all right. I know that was part of it, and I know it wasn't all of it, either."

Matt went on, staring at the ground, trying to organize his own thoughts.

"People like Ben and my dad, our parents...they show you the worst sides of everything. Everyone. It's half the truth. But that doesn't mean it's worth listening to. Because...without the other half, it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't make any sense."

He glanced at Nathan out of the corner of his eye.

"You asked me to do it because you knew I could, Nathan. Not a lot of people think I'm much use for anything. And I signed up for the job. I knew what I was doing, it's not my first time."

"So we're good," said Nathan.

"We're good." Matt smiled. "At least my dad taught me something."

"Okay." Nathan nodded. "Thanks. For understanding."

"And there's no way I could have pulled that off," said Peter. "I didn't even know your power could work like that. Nathan told me about it, but seeing it was something else."

"Besides," he said, walking up to Matt, "What matters is that it's over, we did it, we're all safe."

"Yeah." Matt turned to Hiro. "Do you think you can teleport all of us? We'll have to take Ben back, too."

"Yes," said Hiro. "But Peter can do it, too, his power is much better now."

"Yeah, I think I can," said Peter. "Let's go home."


	17. Epilogue

_Author's Note: Final chapter! Thanks to everyone who stuck with this story._

_**December 9th, 2007**_

_**Isaac Mendez's Loft, Lower Manhattan**_

Peter looked out at the sky. The sun would rise soon. He could tell from the way the sky was growing steadily brighter, like a screen lit from behind.

He stood outside the loft, waiting for Matt, Nathan, and Hiro to catch up. He could hear them talking, a few steps behind.

"This teleporting thing freaks me out," said Matt. "Maybe next time we should just fly."

"I thought we weren't going to talk about that ever again."

"Oh yeah, right." Matt snorted. "I just had this mental image of you with Ben strapped to your back, zooming over the Atlantic."

Hiro laughed. "We can make the airline. Flying Man Cargo Jet. Boeing Nathan-Four-Seven."

"Oh, Nathan's not a cargo jet. He's real specific about that."

"Ha ha."

Peter smiled to himself, making a mental note to tease his brother about this later, and turned to his left, where Sayid was standing.

Ben remained suspended in the air between them, his head flopping forward onto his chest, his arms and legs hanging limply.

Sayid hadn't said a word since they'd left Ben's office, but he looked more peaceful and at ease than he had since Peter had met him. Peter could see that he wasn't happy--he wasn't sure if Sayid could ever be truly happy again--but he didn't look like he hated himself anymore, either.

Following Sayid's eyes, Peter saw that he was watching the others inside the loft. Hurley, Claire, and Molly were seated at the table, playing Monopoly.

Mohinder was looking on in the background, making tea. Jack was standing next to him. Peter watched them talking--Jack seemed tired, and rather dazed, but otherwise okay.

"Peter." Nathan was behind him. "Are we going to stand here all day?"

"Oh, right." Peter pushed the door open, and walked in, standing in the doorway. The others didn't look up--they were still engrossed in their game.

"Ha!" said Claire. "You landed on Park Place, and I have two hotels and a house there. Pay up."

Molly sighed. "You always win at Monopoly. It's not fair."

"Okay dude, my turn," said Hurley. He rolled the dice. "Two fours."

"You have to go to jail," said Molly. "Do not pass Go, Do not collect 200." She looked up at Hurley. "Didn't you just get out of jail?"

"Aw, crap," said Hurley. "I mean, oops." He covered Molly's ears. "Pretend you didn't hear that."

"Peter!" Mohinder had seen them. He ran to the stairs. "Thank god you're all right, we were worried. Ms. Kwon called again while you were gone--she's going to be on the next flight to New York. How did it go?" He stopped, pointing at Ben. "Is that--"

"Yeah, that's him." Peter walked in and dropped Ben on the bed. His glasses had been dislodged on the way over, and were hanging from his ear. Peter hesitated, then reached out and placed them back on his face.

He turned back to the others, who were busy talking about what had happened. Only Jack stood off to one side. He wasn't watching them--he was looking in Peter's direction, and Peter saw that he was staring at Ben.

"Hey." He walked up and put a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Are you okay?"

It took a while for Jack to respond: eventually he shook himself and looked down at Peter as if seeing him for the first time. "Sorry, what? Oh, yeah."

He smiled. It was a small smile, but a smile, nevertheless. He hadn't shaved--but he looked more like the surgeon that Peter had known a few years ago, and less like the guy he'd seen in the bar earlier that night. "Yeah. I'm fine."

"Don't worry," said Peter, gesturing towards Ben. "He's alive. Maybe we can let him out later."

"To be honest, I'm not too concerned about his welfare," said Jack. "But thanks, anyway."

"Jack." Sayid detached himself from the rest of the group, and walked up to him.

"Sayid."

They stood staring at each other for a few moments. Peter thought they both seemed nervous--but they also looked like they'd been friends, once upon a time.

Sayid finally spoke. "Hello, Jack. It's been a long time."

"I'm..." Jack paused, swallowing. "It's good to see you again."

"It is good to see you, too."

Peter noticed that the room had suddenly gone quiet: everyone was standing around, somewhat at a loss, waiting for somebody to take the lead.

There were a few more moments of awkward silence, before Jack and Nathan stepped forward at the same time.

"Listen," said Nathan.

"We're going to have to--" said Jack.

They looked at each other.

"If you've got any ideas, we should hear them," said Nathan. "You know a lot more about this island than we do."

"And you know more about the whole superpower thing," said Jack, nodding. "Division of labor seems like a sensible policy."

"All right," said Nathan. He went over to the corner and pulled out one of Mohinder's chalkboards. "First things first. Not everyone's here yet. Ms. Kwon's on her way, but we haven't succeeded in contacting Kate Austen yet."

"Sayid said that you should talk to her, Jack," said Peter. He watched as Nathan started writing everyone's names on the chalkboard.

"If you're ready," said Sayid, "Then we should go and visit Kate as soon as possible." He looked around at the rest of the room. "That is, if one of you would be willing to take us there."

"I will go," said Hiro. "Just tell me where."

"Sayid..." Jack looked doubtful. "I don't know if she'd listen to me."

"You are more likely to persuade her than anyone else," said Sayid. "We can but try."

Jack finally nodded. "Okay."

"Good." Nathan wrote 'Contact Austen' next to their names.

"We'll go over everything again while you're gone, make sure everyone's up to speed," he said. "We should travel light: teleporting's difficult enough as it is without adding extra baggage. Speaking of which--we should weigh the risks of getting separated, versus the risks of trying to transport too many people at once."

"You guys are the experts," said Jack, walking up to the board. "But it might be a good idea for Peter to take two at a time. One person with superpowers, and one person who knows the Island."

He shook his head. "I can't believe I just said that."

"You get used to it," said Claire. "Well, kind of."

"Anyway," Jack continued, "Everyone should carry a weapon, just in case. A bottle of water, and any small emergency supplies you can carry in your pockets. Do you guys have any spare guns?"

Sayid went up to the table, and opened his bag. "I have plenty," he said. "And ammunition to spare. I have also prepared maps of the Island: everyone should take one and keep it with them at all times. They are inexact and incomplete, and we do not know what may have changed during our absence. But they may be of some use nevertheless."

"Good thinking," said Nathan, taking a map from Sayid. "It wouldn't hurt to review these before we leave, either. Mr. Reyes--"

"Dude, I told you to call me Hurley."

"You and Claire should organize the water and any other things that might come in handy that won't take up too much space. Flashlights, walkie-talkies, and so on. Peter, start focusing. You'll have to get this right on the first try. Matt, you know how to handle a gun: look over Jarrah's arsenal while he and Shephard are gone. Make sure everything's in order, sort out who's going to get what."

Nathan turned back to the board and began writing up the assigned tasks. As if obeying some invisible signal, everyone moved to carry out their respective duties.

Peter walked up to his brother. They stood next to each other for a while, contemplating the board, but neither of them reading anything on it.

"So this is it," said Nathan. "You ready for this?"

"Yeah. It's now or never." Peter could feel the familiar bubble of excitement forming in his chest, the tingling in his fingertips when he just knew something big was coming.

"If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be doing this, I'd have said you were insane."

"Well, you kind of did," said Peter, smiling.

He understood what Nathan meant, though. It was hard to believe that they'd only met most of these people a few days ago: but that had been true of Claire and Mohinder and Matt and Hiro and Molly, back when all this crazy stuff had started happening. And look at them now.

It was all connected somehow, _they_ were all connected, even if they didn't seem to be: Peter knew that. He also knew that Nathan might not believe the same thing--or at least, not with the same certainty--but he believed in Peter, and that was enough.

_Live together, die alone._

He'd accidentally overheard Jack thinking it, before they'd left the bar earlier. It sounded like something he'd thought about a lot.

"It's okay, Nathan," said Peter, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Whatever's in front of us, we can face it, as long as we're together."

"You'd better make sure you get all of us to the island, then."

"Hey." Matt came up to them, and handed them each a gun. "Automatics, fifteen rounds in each. Do you guys know how to use these things?"

"I do," said Nathan. "But with any luck, we won't need them."

He turned back to Peter. "We'd better get started. We've got work to do."

THE END


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